Cannes Lions launches The Work, a digital platform for creative industry

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has announced the launch of The Work, a new digital resource aimed at providing the global creative communications industry with the intelligence they need to do better business. 

The Work is a unique digital platform that offers intuitive ways to search over 200,000 global pieces of creative work, curated playlists, and spotlights on the work of individual brands and agencies. This database of creativity is organised intelligently to allow businesses to access the world’s greatest work by accolade, industry sector, brand, agency, geography or individual. 

Each piece is framed by its data, context and insights, making The Work an invaluable platform that will enable creatives and marketers to do better work through collaboration, fast research, and – crucially – the ability to crack a brief quickly. The platform digitises the huge wealth of creative work that Cannes Lions recognises, transforming creative history into a powerful tool to inform future smart decision-making. 

Philip Thomas, CEO, Ascential Events and Chairman-elect, Cannes Lions, commented, “Every year at Cannes Lions, our juries judge tens of thousands of global entries, resulting in the greatest collection of creative, game-changing work from across the world. Our research shows time and again that the more creative your business is, the better your return on investment. The launch of The Work brings a unique and fundamental digital platform to the market which offers more intelligent and efficient ways of working, to increase creative output and ultimately, drive better business.” 

The Work will officially launch at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2018. Built from user insights from 250 global agency and in-house stakeholders, along with data science and data engineering, The Work is the result of a mission to build a user-centric platform that gives a platform for creative work to inform future business performance. Cannes Lions owner Ascential is planning to leverage insights from the tool with other data in due course, such as e-commerce performance data, to offer brands holistic views of performance. 

Duncan Painter, CEO, Ascential, added here, “Ascential’s mission is to unlock the future for our customers through our business-critical intelligence. The launch of The Work marks the next step on the journey to digitise the Cannes Lions platform to provide valuable insights to its customers. The Work sits alongside other Cannes Lions launches, such as the Cannes Lions Creative Leaders Programme and Cannes Lions Masters for Brands, which are all aimed at helping businesses remain future-focused.” 

Delivering on Cannes Lions’ promise to increase the digital exposure of the work beyond the Festival, anyone attending or entering Cannes Lions 2018 will receive complimentary access to The Work during the Festival and for a month afterwards. A specially curated version of the product will also be available as a free trial for the wider creative community.