The 2025 Cannes Lions B2B Awards mark a major turning point for business-to-business marketing. For the first time, creativity has established itself as an indispensable strategic lever. The award-winning campaigns demonstrate that companies that dare to break away from traditional approaches gain visibility, trust, and performance.
The 2025 Cannes Lions confirm a profound transformation in B2B marketing. Creativity, emotion, and trust are no longer secondary considerations. They have become key drivers of performance. Here are the winning campaigns and the lessons to take away for 2026.
Cannes Lions 2025 B2B: A Turning Point for Business-to-Business Marketing
Cannes Lions 2025 has reached a major milestone. The launch of a summit entirely dedicated to B2B, in partnership with LinkedIn, confirms a trend that many had already been observing. B2B marketing is changing in nature.
For a long time, it relied on functional, rational, and cautious approaches. Today, that approach is no longer enough. Brands must now capture attention, evoke emotion, and build trust.
In other words, B2B is fully embracing a strategic communication approach. Here’s an overview of the winning campaigns, key takeaways, and must-see videos.
The Grand Prix: GoDaddy Proves That B2B Can Captivate
🎥 Click on the image to watch the video
The big winner of the 2025 edition is GoDaddy with its “B2B: Act Like You Know” campaign. It won the Grand Prix at the Creative B2B Lions. Created by the agency’s in-house team in Scottsdale, the campaign features American actor Walton Goggins. He launches a demo product for GoDaddy’s new AI tool through a fictional company: Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses. The result? A $1.6 billion jump in the company’s market capitalization.
Wendy Walker, VP of Marketing for ASEAN at Salesforce and chair of the 2025 Creative B2B Lions jury, said that the jurors were all “smiling and laughing” when they saw the work because it was so entertaining. She concluded that B2B can be “bold, entertaining, and brilliantly effective.”
Caption with Intention: Creativity in the Service of Inclusion
Another campaign that left a lasting impression is “Caption with Intention.” Developed by FCB Chicago for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Rakish, and the Chicago Hearing Society, this campaign won three Grand Prix awards and a Titanium Lion, in addition to seven other Lions.
The concept? Completely reinventing subtitling for the 433 million people worldwide who are hard of hearing. The new system transforms subtitles into dynamic visual language. This preserves the emotional integrity of the content while maximizing clarity and readability. The result is so impressive that it is now mandatory for all Oscar-eligible films. It has also been adopted by major studios.
🎥 Watch the campaign video here: Caption with Intention
Trust: The New Cornerstone of B2B
According to Dr. Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, B2B decision-makers ask themselves one question every time they choose a supplier: “Do companies like mine buy from companies like this one?”
Mimi Turner, Head of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn, presented exclusive research conducted for Cannes Lions 2025. She revealed that “the first thing that matters to decision-makers, even more than buying something that gets the job done, is feeling confident that they could defend that decision if things go wrong.” And the most acceptable excuse? That “companies like us” recommended the selected company.
Abhinav Kumar, Global CMO of Tata Consultancy Services, summed up this sentiment with a powerful statement: “When a CEO chooses you as a technology partner, they’re staking their career on it. So what matters is: Will this company deliver on its promises to me? Will it be there for me when problems arise?”
Examples of best practices in building trust:
- SAP ‘Unstoppable’ (BBDO New York) – Real customer stories transformed into visual allegories. They demonstrate that SAP understands its customers’ challenges.
- Mibanco ‘EstibADores’ (Circus Grey, Lima) – Informal market porters transformed into walking billboards, winning a Silver Lion and increasing the porters’ earnings by 30%. 🎥 View the campaign
- IKEA ‘The Co-Worker’ (Mother London) – An IKEA store within the Roblox game offering 10 virtual job openings, resulting in a 50% increase in applications. 🎥View the campaign
Emotion: The Hidden Driver of B2B Decisions
This may be the most important revelation from the summit: B2B buyers are, above all, emotional human beings. Dr. Marcus Collins described the belief that “B2B marketing is a rational buying process” as a “particularly harmful red flag.”
Lisa Maxwell, Vice President of B2B Marketing at Mastercard, reinforced this message: “We don’t market to job titles. We market to people who bring emotion to every decision they make.”
Effective emotional examples:
- JCDecaux ‘Still Open’ (DAVID Madrid) Golden Lion: deeply moving stories of small business owners who lost their livelihoods in the floods in Valencia, Spain. 🎥 View the campaign
- Arla ‘Recipe for Growth’ (FP7 McCann, Dubai): traditional recipes from displaced Lebanese women turned into income through partnerships with restaurants.
- LinkedIn ‘B2B Documentary’ (LinkedIn, Dublin) Bronze Lion: a documentary showcasing the human stories behind B2B, with over 100,000 views. 🎥 View the campaign
Storytelling: Simplifying and Persuading
Erika Serow, Partner and CMO at Bain & Company, offered a piece of advice that sums it all up: “We make everything so complicated, especially in B2B. Keep it simple.” She explained that B2B brands need to stop focusing on features and start telling stories about how their products make their customers feel.
Colin Fleming, CMO of ServiceNow, illustrated this approach with the “Put AI to Work for People” campaign, which features British actor Idris Elba, as an example of how human-centered storytelling can transform a technology company.
Tim Hoppin, former Chief Brand and Creative Officer at SAP (now at AWS), summed up the philosophy to adopt: “Be bold, be free, be emotional, tell stories.”
Creativity and Performance: A Link That Has Now Been Proven
It was Karen Crum, Strategy Partner at EY-Parthenon, who dealt the harshest blow to conservative approaches. She cited research showing that “highly creative campaigns generate four times more profit than unengaging campaigns.” And she dropped this line that should resonate in every B2B boardroom: “Not using creativity is a risk.”
Anselmo Ramos, founder and Creative Chairman of GUT, added a quote worthy of framing: “Safe is invisible. Bold is unforgettable. Winning brands don’t play by the rules, they rewrite them.”
Winning creative examples:
- NotCo’s “Add Your Logo” (GUT Mexico City) shortlisted: NotCo’s AI created products for both pets and their owners, attracting 8,500 new users.🎥View the campaign
- Google Workspace’s “50 States, 50 Stories” (Google, Sunnyvale) shortlisted: 50 short documentaries about small American businesses, resulting in a 20-fold increase in trial conversions.🎥 View the campaign
The B2B Brand: A “Vessel of Meaning”
Dr. Marcus Collins defined a brand as “a vessel of meaning,” while Karun Crum (EY-Parthenon) noted that a brand can account for up to 30% of a company’s market capitalization. According to LinkedIn research, 81% of B2B buyers reported being familiar with the brand even before making a group decision.
The New B2B Generation: Millennials and Gen Z at the Helm
A striking statistic from the summit: Millennials and Gen Z make up 71% of B2B buyers today. And they don’t want traditional sales relationships or conventional demos. They want to hear from experts and base their decisions on trust and recommendations, just as they do in their personal lives.
This is what Jann Schwarz, Senior Director of Marketplace Innovation at LinkedIn, described as “The Rise of the Professional Creator”, the emergence of professional creators who build their audience on authentic, long-term foundations.
Cannes Lions 2025 B2B: A Clear Message for Businesses
The 2025 Cannes Lions sent a clear and unequivocal message: B2B is no longer an excuse for being boring, functional, or rational. The winning campaigns, from GoDaddy to SAP, from Caption with Intention to Preserved Promos, all demonstrate the same thing. Creativity, emotion, storytelling, trust, and brand strength are not optional elements in modern B2B marketing. They are the very foundations of success.
As Simon Cook, CEO of LIONS, so aptly summarized: “Creativity transforms B2B products and services. We can see this in the work these B2B brands are doing, in the way they innovate, and in how they communicate with their buyers.”
B2B companies that fail to align with this new reality won’t just fall behind. They risk becoming invisible. The message is simple: it’s time to stop playing by the old rules. Time has come to rewrite them.
The challenge now is to be creative with more modest resources, within the reach of B2B SMEs. However, I am confident. Young B2B marketers, armed with their smartphones, powered by artificial intelligence, and using dedicated creative apps, are set to surprise us in 2026!
🎥 Additional video resources from the summit:
- How to Be Buyable in B2B
- B2B’s New Brand Manifesto
- How Do We Close Creativity’s C-Suite Gap?
Conclusion
The 2025 Cannes Lions B2B Awards are more than just a list of winners. They are a signal. Creativity, trust, and storytelling are redefining the rules of B2B marketing. The real question is no longer whether these elements are relevant. It’s how you’re going to integrate them into your strategy.
First, does your content truly reflect your expertise? Next, is your brand visible, credible, and memorable? And finally, is your marketing designed to persuade… or simply to inform?
At ExoB2B, we support B2B companies that want to transition from transactional marketing to marketing that truly influences decisions. Let’s talk about it.
FAQ
Why are the 2025 Cannes Lions important for B2B marketing?
The 2025 Cannes Lions B2B mark a turning point. They confirm that creativity, emotion, and trust are now essential drivers of performance. B2B marketing can no longer be limited to rational or technical approaches.
What B2B trends emerge from the 2025 Cannes Lions?
Three major trends emerge from the 2025 Cannes Lions B2B. First, the importance of trust in purchasing decisions. Second, the central role of emotion in communication. Finally, the rise of storytelling as a tool to simplify complex offerings.
How can the lessons from Cannes Lions 2025 be applied to B2B?
Companies can draw inspiration from Cannes Lions 2025 B2B by adopting a more creative and human-centered approach. This involves better communicating their value, highlighting their customers, and creating content that builds credibility and trust over the long term.
