Cannes Lions 2023 At A Glance

The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2023 was held on the 19th until the 23rd of June. A week of sessions circling around Artificial Intelligence made it the underlying theme of the 2023 festival. The coveted festival celebrated its 70th anniversary & inaugurated new awards for this year’s event. With 15,000 experts attending the festival, it aimed to set the benchmark for industry standards for the year to come. This year the festival saw a surge of increase of 18% in brand submissions - 26,992 submissions to be exact. Hot topics which ranged from Generative AI, Humor in Advertising & Virtual Influencers were heavily discussed on the 70th anniversary of the festival. Let’s look at what happened throughout the week

Day 1

The Creative Impact track was inaugurated this year; it is in collaboration with Cannes Lions’ sister brand – WARC. It aims to understand the economic impact of creativity.It was highlighted in the session of CMOs in Spotlight wherein PepsiCo, Not Co & Eli Lily discussed how CMOs are being more involved in financial conversations to understand the Creative Impact of ad campaigns, but they are persistent in saying that the creative idea should be driven by data provided by consumer behavior to make the campaign both creative & revenue generating.

A segment named Equality Lounge was an all-day event focused from Day 1 until Day 3 of Cannes Lions, it is a segment launched by The Female Quotient to close the gender wage gap. Many female leaders like Remi Kent & Ciara Gary gave an insight into the marketing space & spoke about their inspiring stories on making their way

Creative Marketer of the Year was announced, and the session was headed by the winner - AB InBev. They’ve secured the award two years in a row, Simon Cook CEO of Cannes Lions added, “ABI is the first brand to be awarded for two consecutive years. This win bucks the trend and demonstrates an ongoing commitment to creativity as a driver for growth.”

Measuring Creativity, Creatively was an interesting session headed by Duncan Painter & Ruslana Zbagerska, it aimed to clear that connecting with consumers creatively is important but measuring the economic impact of the campaign is a key factor in understanding the Creative Impact of the campaign.

The session headed by Nick Law & David Droga from Accenture Song called Song Simplifies Talent: Technology is Creative highlighted that generative AI is here to stay. They spoke about how AI is taking over the advertising realm but would still need human interaction & intelligence to make a brilliant creative. "I am not worried that machines will become more like humans. I am worried that humans will become more like machines." - Nick Law, Accenture Song

Day 2

With AI being the hot topic of conversation, many experts debated whether AI would cause a decline in creativity. In a session headed by Jenseng Huang from Nvidia Corp & Mark Read CEO of WPP called AI Unleashed: How AI Is Revolutionizing How We Live, Work and Create, Jenseng explained how generative AI works in layman terms and spoke about how all creative agencies are set to becoming an AI company at its core. He emphasized that AI could standardize content generation, but it will supercharge creativity by equipping creative experts with ample data.

Estee Lauder had a session to improve diversity & equality standards in the industry, in a session named Evolving Icons: A New Generation of Brand Representation and Beauty, Amanda Gorman, a writer, poet & activist discussed her brand partnership with Estee Lauder. It is thrilling to see a poet become the new face of the brand and allowing individuals who are more than a model or an actress to represent a beauty brand at scale.

Kevin Hart, a comedian, an actor, and founder of Hartbeat was awarded The Entertainment Person of the Year. In his seminar, he spoke about how creatives ought to embed humor, charisma and personality into their work to connect with people.

In the session, The Third Age of Effectiveness with Les Binet, Grace Kite & Tom Roach discussed the creative impact of ad campaigns and how statistics, evaluation, and measurement need to be brought to the forefront in analyzing the effectiveness of the ad campaign.

Bentley sought a new plan to target the younger gen, in a session called How Bentley Put Creators in the Driver’s Seat Christophe Georges CEO of Bentley Americas spoke about his collaboration with the Shoe Surgeon Dominic Ciambrone, a celebrity bespoke shoemaker. This collaboration reconnected the legacy brand with the new gen.

Day 3

Many sessions were held around using AI in media, one such event caught our eye – AI & Media Landscape in which Alyson Shontell, Mathias D?pfner, Chairman and CEO, Axel Springer spoke about how AI will change the way in how news & media networks will work. Mathias spoke about how reports need to be physically present at the scene rather than sitting at a desk and how AI might help make this happen.

The CMOs in Spotlight session was headed by Loreal Groupe, Kraft Heinz and Booking.com spoke about how taking risks in marketing needs to be reframed. They together advised marketers to learn from their mistakes and they too, make mistakes and make better insightful strategies in the next run. Arjan Dijik from Booking.com added further on Generative AI and said: “Right now, it feels like 1995 when the Internet was invented, however, we need to remember AI is a predictive truth and it is still developing” and because of this they “keep it small but take risks” in that space.

The Triple Opportunity of Attention session said out to speak about the 3 problems marketers are facing today : 1) The prioritization of performance advertising in marketing budgets 2) The prioritization of low-attention media and 3) A shift in advertising style towards ads that don't build brands. Karen Nielson Field the CEO of Amplified Intelligence spoke about “attention elasticity” and how each platform has its own attention span demarcation, even if the creative is brilliant and data backed if deployed on a low attention elasticity platform, it fails to capture the attention of the viewer.

Day 4

Day 4 at Cannes was monumental for India, The Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix went to Oglivy, the second time in a row, this year Oglivy Mumbai won the award for Shah Rukh Khan’s Cadbury ad featuring Shah Rukh as a brand ambassador for the small stores across India to help boost their sales in the post-pandemic era. ?Mie-Ling Wong, who is the senior vice president of global brands, Mondelez said “Purposeful business seeks to solve an external meaningful challenge profitably.” Wong also mentioned, “It is about doing more good in profit instead of doing less at a bad cost.”

Apple’s VP of Marketing Communications Tom Myhren headed a session called Unboxing wherein he discussed the nitty gritty of creative work & relationships between brands & agencies. He discussed the behind-the-scenes footage of the Selena Gomez music video which featured the #Shotoniphone campaign.

The most awaited session – “But Seriously Though – Why We Need To Make People Laugh" addressed by President BBDO worldwide – Andrew Robertson spoke about how humor shows to impact a major role in advertising. He provided data to show that humor is the easiest way of connecting with people and it is a powerful tool in generating massive Creative Impact.

Andrew also insisted that humor can be used in every single channel of advertising, he commented “I’ve seen good data to show how well it can work for everything from a billboard to e-commerce copy, and for every category from beer to funeral directors.”

Coperni & Creativity: A marriage of Art & Tech session was enlightening, we saw the viral video of Bella Hadid’s dress being sprayed on stage at the Coperni show and how the monumental moment happened by using the synergy of Art & Technology. Co-Founders of Coperni, Sebastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant spoke about how Coperni incorporates technology into their fashion, using antiviral fabric and drawing inspiration from icons. This fusion of art and technology helps them create unique and innovative designs.

Day 5

An inaugural award named – Creative Maker of the Year went to the legendary filmmaker Spike Lee. He claimed the award and presented a beautiful speech about his long-standing career. He spearheaded campaigns such as the first Nike Air Jordan ad and the Jeans campaign for Levis.

Susan Hoffman, Chief Creative Officer, Wieden+Kennedy awarded the Lion of St Mark award, in a sit down session with Simon Cook the CEO of Cannes Lions 2023, she spoke about ideas and if they “scare the shit out of you” one must go for it. She spoke about how “Fail Harder” was a thought-provoking notion at W+K and she said it should be a mantra for founders to fail & try harder in the next run. Day 5 concluded the Cannes Lions film festival by announcing Glass Lions for change which was won by South Korea for 'Knock Knock', for the Korean National Police Agency & Titanium Grand Prix went to 'The First Digital Nation', for The Government Of Tuvalu, by The Monkeys, Part of Accenture Song, Sydney, Australia.

A lot of new integrations were made to this year’s Cannes Lions. Cannes Lions saved 5812 plastic bottles from entering the landfill and oceans by partnering up with HOPE Hydration and dentsu to provide refill stations across the venue.

Cephas William founder of Black British Network addressed the industry to talk about Black creators and their roles in the industry in his session - Black Out.

A total of 873 Lions was presented with 37 Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2023.The Incivus team congratulates all the winners! We can’t wait to see how the creative standards rise for the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival.