Creative Effectiveness Lions

The Creative Effectiveness Lions celebrate the measurable impact of creative work.

Entries into this Lion will need to demonstrate how an effective strategy rooted in creativity has met its chosen business objectives, how it generated positive customer outcomes and drove sustainable business impact over time.

In close collaboration with the industry, we have updated the Creative Effectiveness Lion for 2021 to ensure that the Award accurately reflects the new language of effectiveness, variety of measurable results and breadth of work driving business impact and commercial success.

We have taken principles from the Creative Effectiveness Ladder created by Cannes Lions and WARC to embed the shared language for creative effectiveness measurement. More information about the Creative Effectiveness Ladder can be found on our website.

This comprehensive guide aims to help entrants through each stage of the process. Here you will find information on the new and updated categories as well as a breakdown of the restructured entry form along with all the other information required to craft a successful Creative Effectiveness entry.

Why now?

Launched in 2011, the Creative Effectiveness Lions have been defined by a demanding entry process involving detailed dissection of the work, focused largely on articulating demonstrable results. It’s a requirement that has had the effect of bringing companies and their brands together to collaborate on submissions – a process that is in itself beneficial.

We understand now more than ever that creativity drives effectiveness and that creativity is the most actionable driver of effective work.

Our aim is to provide a shared language around what effective work looks like and how it is discussed and assessed. Through the redesign and restructure of our entry form and new and updated categories we have provided a framework around which entries should be built and also assessed by our panel of expert jurors.

The newly designed and restructured entry form consists of four main sections relating to different types of results including Engagement & Awareness, Social Behaviour & Insight, Brand Affinity & Sentiment and Sales Success.

This will allow entrants to provide a range of results across a variety of areas. There is also the opportunity to upload any relevant graphs, charts or images at the end of each of the sections. The form also includes questions around the objectives of the work and discounting factors.

What kind of work can be entered?

Creative Effectiveness Lions is open to any organisation that has won or been shortlisted for a Lion in 2018, 2019 or 2020/2021, that can demonstrate that their creative work has driven results and achieved commercial success for a brand.