Now that Cannes Lions 2025 has officially wrapped up, it is the perfect time to reflect on some key takeaways for advertisers to focus on for the rest of the year. While there are plenty to choose from, one pattern that stood out was how brands that delivered high social impact campaigns were winning big.
According to the7stars thought leadership piece, Restoring Media’s Mojo in 2025: The Power of Impact, consumers are actively looking at brands to both align with their social values and make a difference. Looking at Cannes case studies and beyond, it appears as if brands that prioritise getting impact right were more likely to succeed.
Impact and purpose are similar, but they have subtle but fundamental differences.
A brand with purpose would align themselves with a cause and maybe even deliver results, whereas impact goes further by making sure those results are felt in the real world and easily associated back to your brand. For example, a purpose-led brand could donate a significant amount of money to a charity that helps to tackle teenage self-esteem issues. An impact-led brand however could fund research on self-esteem issues, deliver a 20 yearlong campaign with actionable, empowering messaging and launch initiatives geared towards alleviating self-esteem issues at their root causes.
This impact-led campaign, Real Beauty, by Dove, was incredibly successful at Cannes picking up two Grand Prix awards, but they also turned their cultural relevance into ROI at a ratio of greater than 4:1 according to the IPA.
So impactful campaigns are winners, but there’s another layer that also deserves a spotlight.
Driving impact alone is great but doing so while positioning your brand as a willing collaborator with consumers is even better. Behavioural science expert Dr. Tali Sharot explained why this is such an effective marketing strategy. As people, we are moved to action more when it feels like someone, or something, is working with us to achieve a common goal, rather than telling us what we need to be doing.
A recent example of a successful collaborative impact campaign in the UK is challenger brand Wild.
They spotted a chance to make an impact by removing plastic waste in the bathroom which they embedded as part of their brand mission. But instead of admonishing consumers for their wasteful habits, they instead made an easy-to-use product to help combat this challenge and positioned Wild as the people’s partner throughout this endeavour.
Eli Miansarow, head of Brand at Wild, highlighted how well this core message translated to consumers – “despite early mistakes, people wanted us to succeed as much as we wanted to succeed, and that was the key reason for such rapid growth”. Wild’s growth in this case was 200% y-o-y growth since 2020.
Impact is so important because it taps into something that consumers can consider meaningful and attribute back to the brand and drive significant growth. It can be trickyfor advertisers to get right, but by putting it first in the right context it can reap huge rewards.
