Allison+Partners partner and president, consumer brands Lisa Rosenberg shares some of the things she learned from serving as a member of this year’s Cannes Lions jury on the latest “PR’s Top Pros Talk” video interview with Doug Simon.

“Maybe one of the biggest takeaways for me,” she says, was that many brands are beginning to get past simply “raising awareness or educating people” and are moving toward taking concrete action.

“What we started to see,” Rosenberg tells Simon, is “a real tangible shift in how brands were behaving,” with an emphasis on “purpose that had lasting and sustainable impact.”

She discusses how communicators can nudge their clients down the road from awareness-raising to action. One essential step is “really understanding what is your long term commitment to an issue. You can't just say, oh, this is the issue today. I want to be part of this conversation. It really falls flat when it comes to how you're viewed from the consumer standpoint.”

In addition, “brands have to be prepared to take a little bit of a backseat. Really, it's about the problem they're trying to solve. And I think that's where we're going to see an evolution.”

Rosenberg also stresses the importance of customer segmentation. “I think it's understanding the channels that are going to resonate with a particular audience,” she says. Communicators need to have a “deep understanding of the channel and how it works and how the audience engages with that channel, because it's not a one-way conversation.”

As a Cannes Lions judge, does she think there are any secrets to creating an award-winning campaign?

“First and foremost” she tells Simon, “you want to have a narrative that really looks to make connections.” Also, she stresses the importance of building your campaign around an “earned idea”— an idea “that that translates and that moves and that is driving earned attention.”

While she says that judges also keep an eye out for “something that is new, is different,” or ideas that are “simple, bold and arresting,” for her the critical component is that earned idea.

However, she also says that being an award winner is not the only measure of an effective campaign. “Lots of great work doesn't win a lion, it doesn't take away from how great the work is. “

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