From Cannes Lions to email marketing, it has been an intriguing month in the world of branding and marketing. Here are four stories that caught our attention:

1. Get inspired in Cannes

This year marked the 62nd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The festival’s awards are billed as the "global benchmark for what good creative looks like,” and this year’s winners did not disappoint.

If you’re in a creative rut, spend some time on the 2015 winner page and get inspired by the campaigns from all around the world. We think it’s well worth your time!

2. Local news matters.

Whether it’s a metropolis or a city where the town square is still the communication hub, the Pew Research Center reports that local news matters deeply to the lives of Americans. The center looked at news habits of residents across three disparate metro areas in the U.S. and found that nearly nine-in-10 residents follow local news closely. About two-thirds of the residents in each city discuss local news in person a few times a week or more.

There are some interesting findings in this report. Among them – TV attracts more residents than any other local news source.

3. Email marketing needs your attention.

According to Smart Insights, an integrated digital marketing shop, the average email open rate across all industries is 22.87 percent, and the average click-through rate has dwindled to a measly 3.26 percent. In other words – 97percent of all marketing emails do absolutely nothing. Womp, womp.

But before you go crying in your beer, remember that there is a way towards more effective email marketing. Work on creating emails that are more adaptive and better tailored to the unique buying stage of each audience member. If you take this full-scale marketing automation approach, you’re likely to see an 80-percent increase in leads and a 77-percent lift in conversions.

4. Let this be your lesson in crisis communication.

If you’re looking for an interesting case study in crisis communication, look no further than the sunscreen debacle Jessica Alba’s Honest Company is currently dealing with. The company is navigatinga bit of a PR nightmare as a result of a flurry of complaints regarding its sunscreen – which has resulted in some bad burns for some customers. What are your thoughts on the company’s response?

Inga Rundquist

Inga Rundquist is a Public Relations Arsonist and Co-Owner at MindFire. When she’s not dreaming up ideas that will generate publicity, you can find her knee deep in the social media world, also known as the next PR frontier.