What I Learned Judging the Innovation Lions, Where Actions Are the World's Best Ads

'Will it endure? Can it change lives?'

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Cannes Lions was born out of the Cannes Film Festival in the 1950s. And so, unsurprisingly, its origins were in narrative filmmaking—it awarded good commercials. Billboards weren't added until nearly 40 years later. And this, apparently, was considered such an act of heresy that only extensive deployment of the Heimlich maneuveron the Carlton Terrace prevented an entire generation of agency bosses from fatally choking on their fois gras.

Over the following two decades, the festival evolved, along with our industry, into a sprawling, multi-headed hydra rewarding all types of communication.

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