The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has named Unilever as the 2024 Creative Marketer of the Year. 

The Festival said the accolade is presented to a marketer that has “amassed a body of iconic, Lion-winning work over a sustained period of time, with Unilever establishing a reputation for producing brave, creative and innovative marketing solutions.” 
 
Unilever was last named Creative Marketer of the Year in 2010 and in the years since has amassed hundreds of Lions. At last year’s Festival, Unilever was awarded Lions across a number of its brands including Dove, Hellmann’s, Dirt Is Good (known as Persil, Skip and OMO), Magnum, Vaseline, Marmite and Pot Noodle. 
 
In 2023, Unilever’s largest brand, Dove, was awarded the Media Lions Grand Prix for its ‘#TurnYourBack’ campaign by Ogilvy, London / DAVID, Madrid. ‘#TurnYourBack’ was deemed by Media Lions Jury President, Christian Juhl, to be “a timely example of how our industry can use the power of media to protect young people and empower them to reject the pressure they feel to conform to artificial standards and be confident in their true, unfiltered selves.” The campaign was in reaction to a TikTok “beauty filter” that the brand argued perpetuated unrealistic standards of beauty. 
 
Cannes also noted Unilever brand Hellmann’s ‘Make Taste, Not Waste’ creative platform, highlighting its long-standing mission to help people tackle food waste in the kitchen, most recently with the help of ‘Mayo Cat’ at the Super Bowl. With the same humorous tone, Hellmann’s ‘Mayo McHack’ campaign taught Brits how to ‘hack’ the missing mayo item on a famous restaurant chain’s menu, picking up two Silver Lions in PR and Brand Experience & Activation last year.