The ANA’s Global CMO Growth Council, formerly known as the ANA Masters Circle, is a partnership between ANA and Cannes LIONS and represents over 1,200 chief marketers worldwide. ANA LIONS along with WARC has signed a long-term partnership to create a global framework that guides and supports brands in ‘Cracking the Code of Creative Effectiveness.' Using insights from the ANA, WARC & LIONS, and leveraging work from award-winning marketers over the course of the next twelve months, this partnership will work together to create a framework CMOs and brands can follow to establish a culture of both effectiveness and creative excellence leading to long term success for their businesses. The partnership hopes to leverage peer-to peer-learning, case studies, events, and forums to investigate and benchmark the internal beliefs, organization structures, and creative frameworks that consistently produce the highest level of creative work and effective culture. 

As part of the partnership, the ANA and WARC will conduct an extensive worldwide qualitative study among CMOs to identify the elements of a culture of effectiveness and jumpstart the industry's move towards more effective marketing. The study will build on the existing Creative Effectiveness Ladder, developed by WARC and LIONS, a framework to understand how to utilize creativity to drive specific marketing outcomes.

To kick-start the project, on-stage interviews were conducted at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity at the WARC session ‘What Does it Take to Build a Culture of Creative Effectiveness’ moderated by Harjot Singh, Global Chief Strategy Officer, McCann Worldgroup with McDonald’s Joan Colletta, Global Brand Marketing and Global Creative Effectiveness Program Lead and Qaiser Bachani, Global Head of Digital COE and Europe Consumer Experience Lead of Mondelēz International. 

Further insights will be presented at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference on 25-28 October 2022.

Nick Primola, EVP & Head of Industry Leadership and CMO Practice at the ANA, head of Global CMO Growth Council, said: “Creativity is key to unlocking the energy within brands in order to advance business growth and societal good. This partnership activates all the right stakeholders to truly ‘crack the code’ on creative effectiveness and ultimately drive the industry forward.”

Simon Cook, CEO of LIONS, said, "LIONS powers global best practice in creativity and we know through analyzing years of Lion-winning work that creative effectiveness drives business growth and societal change. Through this partnership with WARC and the ANA, we will support the acceleration of effectiveness in creative work, by reaching the broadest breadth of the global industry, underpinned by the data and insights collated through the Creative Effectiveness Lions award and the accompanying Creative Effectiveness Ladder."

Paul Coxhill, CEO of WARC, said, “The aim of this partnership is to drive a culture of effectiveness in our industry. WARC’s vast knowledge base, proprietary data, and extensive experience in marketing effectiveness, combined with the ANA’s work with their Global CMO Growth Council in partnership with LIONS, will help accelerate the practice of effectiveness.”

The project will continue to be activated after Cannes Lions through a tri-branded podcast series of CMO interviews. Starting in early 2023, the ANA, WARC, and LIONS will launch the business structure for socializing, benchmarking, and recognizing creative effectiveness work as well as the optimal culture of effectiveness.