From an under-leveraged archive to powerful new subscription service
We partnered Ascential over the course of 3 years to accelerate its transformation into a B2B information, analytics and events company.
Some of the most successful work we did together involved digitising the Cannes Lions platform to create a new and highly successful paid-for subscription service. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the world’s most prestigious advertising awards, and the benchmark for creative excellence amongst global brands.
Working together, we re-imagined the Lions database as The Work: an intelligence platform that draws on more than 250,000 pieces of work to provide access to insights from the world's most revered brands and the creative brains beyond them.
The world’s greatest intelligence platform for creativity
The Work provides year-round access to data, opinions, analysis and the talents behind winning work entered into Cannes Lions since 2001. It provides expert insights, inspiration, learning and benchmarking for advertising and marketing professionals and brand-owners trying to understand how to create exceptional work that impacts culture and drives measurable impact.
Benefits of a user-centred & participatory design strategy
Our design approach was deeply rooted in understanding user needs and led to a participatory design process and iterative prototyping. This allowed us to uncover unknown and un-met needs that end-users could not themselves have articulated. It gave us an invaluable external perspective, allowed us to cut through ‘opinions’ (including our own!) to make better design decisions based on evidence.
A valuable, evolving platform for growth
Today, The Work is a must-have subscription tool for creative professionals. We transformed an under-leveraged archive into a beautiful, useful, revenue-generative tool that paid for itself almost immediately. And it’s a tool that’s become more useful every quarter as the Lions have added new functionality and new content, including from the acquisition of competitor services such as WARC and Contagious.
Project Impact
56%
increase in subscription revenue from creative archive (Y1)
56%
increase in subscription revenue from creative archive (Y1)
12x
return on investment
12x
return on investment
"Made by Many bring a set of capabilities that allow us as a customer to go faster and validate quicker than we can do ourselves.”
Sean O’Connell
Chief Digital Officer
"Made by Many bring a set of capabilities that allow us as a customer to go faster and validate quicker than we can do ourselves.”
Sean O’Connell
Chief Digital Officer
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