NCM and Creative Ladder Announce 2023 Cannes Young Lions Winners

After a few years off, or in virtual mode, the Cannes Young Lions contest is back in person and the energy behind the global creative competition has returned, as evidenced by the event Wednesday night announcing the U.S. winners. National CineMedia, the largest cinema advertising network and the U.S. representative to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, announced the winners of the 2023 U.S. Young Lions competition. Five teams from several agencies came out on top and will represent as Team USA. More than 280 entries were submitted this year by creative rising stars. This demonstrates a 16% increase of Young Lions entrants to the competition compared to last year. The winning teams are: Digital: Benjamin Lin, art director at Havas; Sarah Park, copywriter at Havas Film: Catarina Barcala, art director at MullenLowe; Palak Kapadia, copywriter at Amazon Media: Sahar Farshi, senior negotiator, digital partnerships at Initiative; Caroline Riggs, senior negotiator, digital partnerships at Initiative PR: Emma LeMay, copywriter at Weber Shandwick; John Chavez, senior designer at Weber Shandwick Print: Kieran Murray, copywriter at MullenLowe; Megan Coats, junior art director at MullenLowe The winners will compete in person for the first time in four years at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June. Adweek is a proud media sponsor of the competition. How they got there In February, NCM brought on The Creative Ladder, a nonprofit dedicated to making creative careers more accessible and inclusive for young people that launched at Cannes last year. It is also the official non-profit partner for the 2023 Young Lions Competition. The organization, founded by Ryan Reynolds, is dedicated to making creative careers more accessible and inclusive for young people. Participants were tasked with helping the nonprofit address the awareness gap surrounding creative careers. Entrants were then challenged to develop a creative and innovative campaign in their respective categories and were challenged with a Career Quiz put together by Creative Ladder. Media winners Sahar Farshi and Caroline Riggs from Initiative in Chicago hadn’t heard of Creative Ladder before the competition. So in their 10-day challenge, they learned all they could, took the quiz and created a plan that involved informing teachers so they could relay it to their students. “We really thought our idea was provocative in the sense that we weren't necessarily having a strict target of 16- to 21-year-olds—we were targeting the teachers to reach the students,” Farsi told Adweek. Riggs said the entire process brought them back to school, figuring out their future careers and how they would go about achieving their goals. “We definitely put a lot more on emphasis of how we would want to know about and utilize the Creative Ladder,” said Riggs. A slide from the media winning entry from team Initiative, Sahar Farsi and Caroline Riggs. "It's amazing to see the depth and diversity of talent on display from this year's Young Lions competitors, and it means so much to me that they took the time to put their energy into big ideas for supporting The Creative Ladder,” said Ryan Reynolds, co-founder of The Creative Ladder in a statement. "Each of us at The Creative Ladder is humbled and honored by the tremendous amount of work the Young Lions put into their entries. Truly next-level creativity." The work gets more intense from here as the team travels to Cannes and gets just 24 hours to collaborate and pull together a presentation to compete with teams from around the globe. What the judges said The judging panel was expanded this year and featured a bevy of industry heavyweights. “Being creative isn't necessarily just being able to be artistic. It's being able to use creative problem solving, using data in a different way, leading in a different way and bringing your talent and passion to an industry that really needs new problem solvers,” said Michelle Froah, who was svp global brand and marketing for MetLife when she judged the film category. Jatinder Singh, global head of data and analytics at Accenture Song, is a judge for creative data in the upcoming Cannes Lions festival and said that while creativity is the heart and the soul of Cannes, we’re now “using data to fuel emotional connections with brands,” and he found the Young Lions finalists made that connection. Creative Ladder Named Official Charity Partner for Cannes Young Lions Competition The extra challenge for the teams came from having to present their work in front of a panel. “Presentation skills were a huge percentage of weighting the finals for those categories. So, it was really fascinating to see how they took all the thinking and the ideas and ultimately translated that into a live presentation,” Amy Tunick, chief marketing officer for National CineMedia told Adweek. In addition to representing in Cannes as Team USA, the Young Lions winners will be featured in a video airing in movie theaters across the U.S. this spring. The movie trailer-style video stars Young Lions judges and competitors and is co-produced by NCM’s in-house creative team, Noovie Studios and FCB New York.