Every Cannes Lions Grand Prix winner starts with a great idea. Throughout the week, strategy will unpack four of this year’s biggest Cannes Lions winners, exploring the thinking behind the work, why it resonated and what marketers can learn from it.
Client: AXA France
Campaign: “Three Words”
Agency: Publicis Conseil, Paris
Award: Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix (plus others in 2025 – this category requires entries to be winners in previous years)
Sometimes the biggest creative ideas aren’t campaigns at all.
In France, as in so many other places, victims of domestic violence often remain trapped with their abusers because they simply have nowhere safe to go.
Home insurance already paid for emergency accommodation after fires and floods – but not when the danger was another person living in the house. French Insurance company AXA realized it didn’t need a new product. It just needed to add three words to its insurance policies: “and domestic violence.”
Those words instantly gave abuse survivors access to emergency accommodation, legal assistance, psychological support and specialist organizations, turning an insurance contract into an escape route. It fundamentally changed what consumers expect insurance to do. Instead of helping people after disaster strikes, AXA now helps people escape one.
Literally millions of policyholders immediately became eligible for the new protection retroactively, and the change sparked industry-wide discussion about domestic violence.
Why this idea?
The advertising wasn’t the idea. The product was. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most creative thing a marketer can do is help change the business itself.
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