Imagination and innovation reigned supreme at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where brands brought the themes to life through sprawling activations across the Croisette designed to entertain, educate and inspire the advertisers, marketers and creatives in attendance. A standout was Meta, sporting a (relatively) new name, and offering several immersive, metaverse-inspired activations, a vivid footprint and a fresh positioning as a fully experiential brand.

“We've had some pretty big changes over the last year,” said Julie Hogan, Meta’s VP of Global Experiential & Industry Marketing. “Our experiences make up a huge component of how we represent Meta and how we want people to engage with our products and services.”

That vision was driven home through myriad touchpoints, including a Reels SuperStudio creator hub; a Horizon Worlds experience via Meta Quest headsets; VR-driven immersive learning; a Ray-Ban Stories demo; and, for the first time, a showcase of WhatsApp’s features for businesses. Check out how Meta courted the advertising and marketing industry at Cannes for the first time in three years.

And then there was Reddit, a newcomer to activating at the festival. True to form, its experience, dubbed “The Reddit Explorers Club,” was as playful and irreverent as it was informative. The overarching takeaway for attendees: You likely Reddit here first.

On display inside its “Den of Discovery” was a museum-like showcase of trendsetting subreddits, praise-worthy redditors, memes that we all know and love, and much more. Check out Reddit’s impressive first go at wooing potential advertisers from all over the globe. And ICYMI, here’s a photo tour of the brand activations at the event, plus a Q&A with digital advertising company Infillion about their tech-focused experiential strategy.

Lastly, we explore how Unilever brand Liquid I.V. is driving awareness with its first national branding campaign across TV, OTT and out-of-home media channels—plus its unique marketing journey from a Facebook- and Instagram-based company to a successful business now primed to achieve scale.

Until next week,

Kaylee Hultgren
Group Content Manager
Chief Marketer

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