At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2017, McCann Worldgroup , L’Oréal, and The Prince’s Trust teamed together and championed self-worth at the festival’s Lions Live talk that featured Suzanne Powers, global chief strategy officer of McCann Worldgroup; Adrien Koskas, General Manager of L’Oréal Paris; Helen Mirren, L’Oréal brand ambassador and Oscar Award-winning actress nest known for her portrayal of the British monarch.
The three expounded on the current campaign crafted by McCann that saw the reinvention of L’Oréal’s 46-yearold slogan “Because You’re Worth It” that espoused pampering and investing in one’s self into “Because We are All Worth It” that championed The Prince’s Trust advocacy of self worth, inclusivity, and diversity. In the campaign’s video, fifteen ambassadors including Mirren, Katie Piper, Marcus Butler and Louisa Johnson share personal stories of overcoming self-doubt, crossing out the words “self-doubt” and writing “self-worth” over it. The ambassadors include people of have endured racist attacks because of their religion, scarring and disfigurement, disability, and self doubt because of questions on their won identity and gender.
At Cannes, Mirren confided to the audience about a friend she had as a 16-year old girl, a young man who took his own life when could not see a future for himself after his father prevented him from going college. “If he could have just got through those unbelievably difficult years between you know 17 and 25 it could have just got through those he would have had a very successful life and instead he killed himself,” she opened up.
“I’m sure everyone sitting here…you had that awful moment of ‘oh god I’m not good enough’ or ‘oh I’m too stupid’ or ‘I’m not funny enough’ or ‘I’m not tall enough,’ ‘I’m too tall’ or ‘My chin is too double, ‘My eyes are too small’ or whatever it is—I bet you none of you will raise your hand right now not one of you because you’re in the advertising business to say yes—every single one of you have experienced this . It’s when it’s in the young it can be so terribly debilitating leaving leading to that moment of actually killing yourself as my friend did,” Mirren said.
Renewed relevance
Together, historic brands such as L’Oréal Paris, McCann Worldgroup, and The Prince’s Trust find renewed relevance in collaboration.
McCann Worldgroup—a global marketing network that has roots dating back 115 years age—is now challenged by disruptive technology that allows consumers to disregard tradition advertising altogether and brands turn to in-house creative teams as well as services offered by social media giants.
L’Oréal Paris—a 108 French cosmetic company—is trying to find its meaning at a time when consumers are eschewing post-colonial notions of beauty, traditional gender roles, and the vanity industry’s manipulation of female insecurities.
The Prince’s Trust—a charity to help young people aged 13 to 30 get into jobs, education and training—was founded 41 years ago by Charles, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent of the United Kingdom’s 99-year-old Windsor dynasty that struggles to find purpose in an age where its function is purely ceremonial, its benefit to its nation is mostly as a tourist attraction, and its moral leadership has long been left in doubt by decades of self-inflicted scandals.
Even as McCann Worldwide was delivering its message of self-worth at the Cannes Live talks with “We are All Worth It,” it was reaping awards such as the Grand Prix Titanium Lions for ‘Fearless Girl’ which recast client State Street Global Advisors investment management group as a company espousing female empowerment with a provocative bronze statue of a girl bravely facing off the iconic Charging Bull sculpture at New York City’s Wall Street, further polishing the network’s credentials on advocacy. On both instances, clients were reinvented as relevant brands that shared their target audience’s values even as McCann did the same for itself.
