WARC to join Cannes Lions’ new digital offering, The Work

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Digital & Media

Cannes Lions announced WARC, the global authority on advertising and media effectiveness, will become a part of its digital offering following its acquisition by Ascential.

Cannes Lions customers will now be able to unlock even richer analysis and benchmarking for their marketing campaigns, from conception to analysis. WARC brings expert guidance and insight on marketing effectiveness to Cannes Lions. In time WARC will come together with Cannes Lions’ The Work to form a digital product that spans creative excellence and marketing effectiveness.

Launched in May this year by Cannes Lions, The Work is a unique digital platform that enables businesses to access over 200,000 pieces of Cannes Lions-winning creative work, allowing customers to intelligently access the world’s greatest examples of creativity, as well as the data and insights surrounding it.

WARC, a long-time partner of Cannes Lions, is a global digital subscription service offering advertising best practice, evidence and insights from the world’s leading brands. The core focus of the business is for brands, agencies and media platforms to understand, measure and maximise advertising effectiveness across all channels. They do this primarily via:

  • 14,000+ Advertising, marketing and PR effectiveness case studies
  • 22,000+ thought leadership, research papers and best practice reports
  • Event reports highlighting key marketing trends from 60+ events worldwide
  • WARC Plus which provides a bespoke Q&A service, primarily for brands
  • WARC Data providing global advertising data, trend reports and benchmarks
  • Gunn Report’s rankings of creativity, effectiveness and media excellence in advertising

Cannes Lions plans to leverage more insights with other Ascential proprietary data in areas such as e-commerce to offer brands an even richer, holistic view of performance. This will provide measurement and effectiveness insights that are critical to help Cannes Lions customers – whether brand, agency or media owner – thrive in the next phase of the digital economy.

Philip Thomas, CEO of Ascential Events and Chairman-elect Cannes Lions:

Cannes Lions is the benchmark of global creative excellence, which puts us in a powerful position to offer insights and tools that will help our customers win in the digital economy. With WARC sitting alongside Cannes Lions’ The Work, we can now provide measurement and effectiveness insights alongside the best creative thinking in the world.

Mike Waterson, Chairman of WARC:

By combining evidence, examples and expert guidance, WARC has grown into a must-have service for agencies, brands and media owners around the world. Joining Ascential and aligning with The Work mean we will be able to offer our clients an unparalleled resource covering all aspects of creative and effective campaigns.