Women account for 70-80 percent of all purchasing decisions, yet they’re often absent, objectified or portrayed in a regressive way in advertising. Diageo’s global head of consumer planning, Andrew Geoghegan, and global brand director of Guinness, Grainne Wafer, examined this truth in a LIONS Live panel, as part of this year’s Cannes Lions, about Diageo’s endeavors to achieve gender equality in advertising. Here are the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Diageo found that signals of cultural change come from the top. To normalize greater gender balance, Diageo hired more women, transforming its once nearly all-male executive committee into one made up of 40 percent women. The change also led to senior female leaders representing 50 percent of the company’s global marketing team.

Creating an inclusive organization also meant implementing policies that mirrored Diageo’s mission. In 2019, Diageo equalized family leave across its global offices, allowing men and women six months of fully paid leave, and up to a year off work. The policy applies regardless of gender, sexuality and the method by which an employee became a parent.

Ads can either constrain or inspire how consumers see themselves. That’s why Diageo conducted an analysis of how women are portrayed in popular culture around the world. The findings provided the basis for Diageo’s “Progressive Gender Portrayal Framework,” an actionable framework it developed to be applicable across all its brands, in different stages of communication developments and in various cultural markets. Diageo distributed the framework to 1,200 marketeers and agencies via training modules to help them identify their own biases.

The framework consists of four guidelines: representation, how ads represent different types of women that consumers can relate to; perspective, or who’s framing the story; agency, addressing women respectfully; and characterization, ensuring women have the same depth and complexity as men who are featured in creative.

Diageo says it was also important to remain honest about any creative they’ve developed that didn’t meet the mark on gender equality. For example, its Bailey’s brand realized that a former brand proposition about making women shine resulted in stereotypical portrayals of women. Bailey’s shifted this messaging to one around adult treats, thereby improving the brand’s health.

To ensure creative meets your standards for gender equality, the duo recommends measuring consumer perception of ads. For example, Diageo’s Guinness brand ran a spot highlighting a Japanese rugby team of females that made it to the 1991 Women’s Rugby World Cup despite social disapproval. A survey after the fact showed that 81 percent of people agreed the ad portrayed women as positive role models.

To encourage gender equality in creative, in 2019, Diageo partnered with Creative Equals to help women return to the industry following a career break of a year or more. The Creative Equals Returner scheme, #CreativeComeback, saw 58 women complete the course and a majority return to creative industries afterward.

Diageo’s commitment to closing the gap in creative leadership stems from efforts made by the company’s outgoing chief marketing officer, Syl Saller. In 2018, Saller sent a letter to agencies calling on them to disclose the percentage of women on their leadership teams and how they plan to address any gender imbalances. Saller will retire this summer after 20 years at Diageo.

When the pandemic hit, the ad industry suddenly became paralyzed. Then, just as brands started to find their footing again, Black Lives Matter protests broke out, exposing the deep cracks of systemic racism in everyday American life. Brands responded with statements, donations, a blackout and a Facebook boycott. Consumers demanded action. All the while, Procter & Gamble (P&G) kept a low profile for what the company’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard says was an intentional display of action, not headlines.

During his Cannes Lions presentation on LIONS Live, Pritchard explained P&G’s behind-the-scenes response to COVID-19, the anti-racism protests and gender inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. In addition, he shares the racial equality roadmaps P&G brands will follow as an example of how brands can use creativity to lead change.

P&G’s pandemic game plan began with a review of every communication through the lens of being useful. In addition to creating how-to content such as cutting hair at home and skincare after wearing a mask all day, P&G donated products, money and personal protective equipment to families in need through over 200 relief organizations worldwide.

In response to a request from Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, to help encourage young people to social distance, P&G enlisted TikTok mega-influencer Charli D’Amelio, who has 65.9 million followers, to create the #DistanceDance challenge. P&G pledged to donate products to families in need for the first 3 million videos that remixed the challenge. The challenge went viral: 3.4 million users created their own version of the dance and D’Amelio’s video has been viewed 16.9 billion times since. P&G, however, didn’t make its involvement explicit.

P&G also launched programs and campaigns aimed at supporting hard-hit communities such as women and BIPOC (Black & Indigenous People Of Color). One such initiative included the re-release of a film P&G first launched in 2019 called “The Look,” designed to highlight the racial bias black men face every day.

Having never dealt with inequality issues in race, healthcare and gender, many brands are willing to initiate change but don’t know where to start. Pritchard recommends taking the time to learn about the history of racism and having difficult conversations to induce understanding, empathy and action.

To continue its anti-racism efforts, P&G has set a goal of achieving 40 percent multicultural representation within P&G North America. It also plans to increase investment in black-owned or operated media companies, agencies and marketing suppliers. A comprehensive review to ensure P&G advertising “accurately and respectfully portrays black people and all people” is also underway. Lastly, P&G is ensuring that it’s not advertising on or near discriminatory content.

Over the last decade, creatively awarded campaigns have become no more effective than non-awarded campaigns, according to a global study from Cannes Lions and WARC that analyzed 5,000 effectiveness case studies from 2011-2019.

The study attributes this collapse in effectiveness to brands decreasing their creative commitment to campaigns in order to more quickly maximize return on investment (ROI). To help marketers reverse this decline and create a universal definition of effectiveness, marketing effectiveness experts James Hurman and Peter Field developed a new framework called the Creative Effectiveness Ladder. As part of this year’s Lions Live panels from Cannes Lions, the two discuss the ladder’s six levels, whether effectiveness comes down to budget and why increasing creative commitment will be critical to improving the value and reputation of marketers.

The Creative Effectiveness Ladder comprises six levels, or the various effects that creative marketing produces, ranging from the least to the most commercially impactful. At the lowest level is “Influential Idea,” campaigns that use creativity to maximize engagement and sharing, resulting in over-achieving on campaign metrics and media efficiency.

Next is “Behavior Breakthrough,” campaigns that use creativity to change the purchase behavior of customers or change other forms of behavior relevant to the success of the brand.

“Sales Spike,” the third level, includes campaigns that use creativity to create short-term temporary sales growth, market share or profitability.

Fourth on the ladder, “Brand Buildup,” includes campaigns that use creativity to improve the fundamental measures of brand health like awareness, purchase intent, consideration and preference.

Fifth is “Commercial Triumph,” or campaigns that use creativity to increase sales and market share beyond a single quarter or beyond the duration of a campaign.

The researchers named the highest level of effectiveness as “Enduring Icon” to describe campaigns that use creativity to drive brand and sales growth consistently over a long period, three years or more. These are brands that use the same creative strategy or creative work over a period of time.

The study also found that there are three campaign variables which align consistently with effectiveness: media spend, campaign duration and number of media channels used. As any of these variables increases, campaigns become more likely to achieve upper levels of effectiveness, indicating there’s a strong correlation between creative commitment and effectiveness.

To understand if a campaign’s effectiveness comes down to spend, the researchers separated campaigns by budget level. They found that at any budget level, effectiveness increased as the other two variables, campaign duration and number of media channels used, increased.

“The reason they all contribute to effectiveness is because they’re all related to the mental availability that the campaign creates, the extent which the brand comes readily to mind in purchase situations,” notes Field.

Hurman and Field suggest that the solution to achieving long-term growth is increasing the creative commitment of campaigns, for creativity is the single most important driver of effectiveness.

In response to the pandemic, restaurants shuttered and delivery and takeout orders skyrocketed. Some restaurants pivoted digital and were able to persevere while others shut down for good. Technomic estimates that the global restaurant business will lose nearly $600 billion in consumer spending in 2020 due to the pandemic.

In a panel on Cannes Lions’ digital platform Lions Live, founding partner of I&CO Rei Inamoto looks to the playbook by which his friend and chef, Yoshihiro Narisawa, pivoted to keep open his two-Michelin star restaurant Les Créations de Narisawa in Tokyo, Japan. In drawing parallels between the restaurant industry and the advertising industry, Inamoto established four imperatives for growth the marketing industry can implement to create new opportunities in the new normal.

In January, as restaurants in Japan closed amid the crisis, Narisawa, where plates start at $400, immediately lost its customers and utility as demand for luxury items and experiences plummeted. Five months later and Narisawa has been able to stay afloat. According to Inamoto, that’s because Narisawa’s team turned on their functional speed, stuck to their point of view and found a sound business case in order to create a practical future for the restaurant.

Inamoto attributes part of Narisawa’s success to his first imperative—shifting from organizational scale to functional speed. Because the in-person dining experience upholds Narisawa’s business model, Narisawa and his team truncated their complex menu to feature just two bento boxes available for delivery. As per Inamoto, “The notion that you have to be small to have the function of speed is completely false.”

Inamoto’s second imperative for growth is sticking to your point of view. In Narisawa’s case, this meant maintaining the restaurant’s premium brand image—using high-quality, sustainable ingredients that are cooked naturally—by only slightly lowering the price of the newly launched bento boxes, to $150 each.

Next, Inamoto advises brands to seek out a sound business case rather than a case study. For example, to stay top-of-mind for his existing customers, Narisawa launched a limited time bento box with Dom Pérignon, priced at $1,000 each. After calculations, the team decided the move was a sound business case rather than just a marketing stunt.

Lastly, Inamoto cautions brands against operating on wishful thinking, or that the pandemic will end soon and allow them to return to normal. Instead, businesses should identify unaddressed customer and cultural needs to create solutions that unlock new marketing opportunities. For Narisawa, that need sprang from the behavioral shift of more people cooking at home. To capitalize on the trend, Narisawa launched freshly packaged food items that could be stored and easily cooked at a later time, starting at $60 each.

Planning for the ideal or immediate future won’t make you competitive enough, says Inamoto. Instead, practical futures offer the sweet spot—close enough to be achievable but allowing just enough time to create new products and services with lasting and meaningful impact.