‘Scammed Lions’: Should We Reassign Awards Stolen by Ghost Campaigns?

Let’s honour the ideas that raised the bar, not the eyebrows.

Beyond celebrating the year’s most creative work, the 2025 Cannes Lions were also marred by controversy, partly overshadowed by a handful of scam entries and questionable work. We’ve all seen it: campaigns created solely to win awards, inflated case studies, or even ghost clients.

Some of these called out entries have already been withdrawn by the agencies, or disqualified by the festival itself, and it’s encouraging to see the organization taking swift action and committing to even stronger measures in the future (more info below). Still, we couldn’t help but think about the abandoned Lions.

That’s why we’re launching ‘Scammed Lions’, a tongue-in-cheek, well-intentioned initiative suggesting to reallocate these Lions to fully honest and truly deserving brands and agencies. It’s about recognising and shining a light on all of the great campaigns that played fair, but lost out to flashier, scam-driven work designed to game the system.

Because when even a few Lions are awarded to questionable work and later exposed, it doesn’t just affect the scammers. It could also raise concerns about the festival and the overall value of its awards, which would be really unfortunate, and something we certainly don’t want to happen to the industry’s biggest celebration of creativity.

A ‘Re-Awarding’ Initiative 

After the 72nd Cannes Lions Festival, six campaigns — collectively awarded 24 Lions, including two Grand Prix — sparked controversy. While they may not have directly “stolen” awards from other entries (since the number of Lions per category isn’t strictly capped), and not all of them have been withdrawn, we felt those Lions couldn’t simply be left wandering in the wild.

Withdrawing scam or ghost campaigns is a crucial first step, one that the festival takes very seriously and investigates thoroughly. But those Lions also present an opportunity: to shine a light on the work that played fair, truly deserved recognition, and perhaps missed out due to the fierce competition from scam entries. You could think of the Cannes Lions as ‘the Olympics of advertising’. And at the Olympics, when an athlete is disqualified for doping, their medal is reallocated to the next eligible competitor(s).

“Scam work stole the stage, and left 24 Lions out in the wild.”

Of course, the most relevant and best-positioned people to reallocate these Lions would be the juries from the 12 affected categories. We would love to see them reconvene to help set this year’s palmarès right, but this doesn’t appear to be planned by the festival at this stage, and understandably, it would be complicated to organize.

In doing so, we won’t name the cheaters. We won’t shame the scammers. Let’s be honest, many acted out of a hunger for recognition, a pressure most brands and agencies can relate to. We also recognise that many talented individuals within those companies may now be unfairly affected by decisions they didn’t make.

‘Scammed Lions’ aims to make the ghosted work vanish, and real creativity shine.

Wait, How Does It Work? Why These Campaigns? 

Purely as a suggestion, and with genuine love for honest creative work, we wanted to imagine who might have earned these prestigious awards if scam entries hadn’t taken their place. But we haven’t taken on this fictional initiative of “re-awarding” ourselves, nor are we doing it randomly. Instead, we turned to the next best source after the actual jurors: Adaily, the #1 AI tool for ad professionals.

This is the most incredible database for ad nerds, powered by 4,800+ award-winning ads from most important advertising festivals from years 2019-2025 (full list available here), including the 360 campaigns awarded at Cannes Lions this year. They proved to be pretty accurate at the predictions game: Adaily recently guessed 3 out of the 4 awarded Lions in the Titanium category (1 Titanium Grand Prix, 2 Titanium Lions), out of 18 Shortlisted campaigns. 

“The data come from publicly available sources shared by agencies, awards shows, media, etc. You can explore the work through filters, like “award level” or “category”. Right now we are running a FREE week, till the 8th of July, where everyone can explore all details of all campaigns in 13 languages natively. The search engine runs on semantics, meaning you can type anything you are looking for, like “Best chocolate ads from Europe”, “Parenthood challenges”, “Female empowerment”… And our system will find them for you.” said Piotr Bombol, Co-Founder of Adaily.

For each Lion compromised by scam work, Adaily analysed the category’s expectations, the award level of the original Lion, plus all shortlisted and awarded campaigns within the same category. After reviewing their available campaign assets, it assigned a ‘deserving score’ to each of the potential replacement entries. We also conducted a manual quality check to ensure, as much as possible, that the suggested work was legitimate and honest.

“In an industry where creative work can achieve the same impact as dull work spending $228 billion more, the stakes are too high for pure intuition alone.”

Piotr Bombol, Co-Founder of Adaily.

The Scammed Lions, and The Suggested New Winners 

This year, six campaigns were publicly called out as ghost or scam work, by media outlets or industry professionals closely involved in each case. The concerns raised included issues such as manipulated media footage using AI, extremely limited public visibility, misleading sustainability claims, and even instances where clients themselves questioned the work’s legitimacy, reach, or impact. In each case, the gap between the case study and reality was a key point of discussion.

To be clear, we are simply reporting on information that has already been made public by others. These are not claims or allegations we are making ourselves. At the moment, only a few of these campaigns have been officially withdrawn by the agencies or by the festival themselves.

Collectively, they received 24 Lions, including 2 Grand Prix, 9 Gold, 6 Silver, and 7 Bronze, across 12 categories (out of 30). Thanks to Adaily’s advertising insights and technology, we are able to propose a fitting new home for the abandoned Lions: 

A Playful Key Visual for an Independent Initiative 

As a cheeky nod to the original Cannes Lions logo, the Scammed Lions initiative introduces a playful spoof: a ‘ghost lion’, standing where we usually love to see a bold, roaring Lion taking pride of place. Importantly, both the font and the lion design are distinct from the official Cannes Lions logo, and the festival’s brand assets remain trademarked. This initiative is entirely independent and is in no way affiliated with or supported by Cannes Lions.

Cannes Lions Introduce Stricter Measures 

In response to these controversies, Cannes Lions announced new measures on June 27, 2025, to uphold integrity and ensure that creativity at Cannes Lions remains real, responsible, and trustworthy, especially in the age of AI. These new measures include:

• A reinforced Code of Conduct
• Mandatory AI disclosure in submissions
• Use of content detection tools
• A new review committee with AI and ethics experts
• Formal enforcement procedures for violations

Let us know what you think of this initiative in the comments below, on LinkedIn, or over email.

Disclaimer: This initiative is an independent, opinion-based project that is not affiliated with Cannes Lions. All information referenced is based on publicly available sources, industry reports, and media coverage. The allegations and call-outs referenced are not made by us, nor do they represent our own claims. This initiative is shared in the spirit of promoting fairness and celebrating honest creative work.