Cannes Lions 2024 - Marketing trends from the Festival of Creativity

Every year Cannes attracts advertisers from across the world to celebrate Creativity. It has earned the reputation of Oscars for commercials. There are very few conferences and meetups today that are still as attractive for everyone worldwide. Cannes Lions falls in that category with more and more companies sponsoring every year and an ever-growing audience of CMOs, and Chief Brand officers but also CTOs and CEOs. Special guest Elon Musk, Owner of X, was at Cannes trying to woo advertisers back on the platform.

Creativity takes many shapes and definitions every year and Cannes Lions keeps adding new award categories to address the changing DNA of creativity. I did not attend the event but as a marketer passionately tried to follow the interesting headlines. There is no surprise that AI, Sustainability, and Diversity were top areas of conversation. But the nuances around how these themes are evolving creativity in Branding and advertising are worth the recap.

Just like every conference, the most discussed topic like last year was Artificial Intelligence. From Sir Martin Sorell to Elon Musk - all think AI is here to stay, grow, and make us more efficient. The talk between Elon Musk and WPP CEO Mark Read was among the most sought-after sessions.

WPP CEO Mark Read at Cannes Lions conference: “In November, you told us to go f*ck ourselves…. Why did you say that, and what did you mean?”

Elon Musk: “It wasn't to advertisers as a whole; it was with respect to freedom of speech.”

This year the focus of the conversation has shifted. From “whether AI will take away jobs” to “how we are using AI to increase productivity and efficiency.

“Even when you have AI in the mix, the heart of the creative process is still people” - Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s VP and General Manager of Advertising

Microsoft hosted a series of panel discussions on this topic with global CMOs from companies like Autodesk, Pfizer, WPP, etc. It seems like leaders and teams across industries are embracing Generative AI and are discussing ways how AI is helping them manage marketing supply chains, while marketers continue to focus on growing brands and bridging the connection between the consumer and the brand.

Toys “R” Us AI Ad using Sora

At Cannes Lions Toys “R” Us premiered an ad created from scratch using OpenAI’s Sora. Sora if you remember is the text-to-video tool that Open AI teased this year in Feb. Toys “R” Us became the first brand to build a one-minute ad with their creative agency Native Foreign who had early access to the tool.

Toys “R” Us rose back from the ashes in Macy’s store locations in 2022 after going bankrupt in 2017. This ad was to celebrate their visionary founder Charles Lazarus, and OpenAI being the most cutting-edge technology today, seemed the best way to honor his legacy. The ad saw mixed reviews. While some loved the use of generative AI in commercial media others felt poor storytelling with creepy images.

Building Brands today is more important than building companies. There have been studies from LinkedIn, Bain & Company, and NewtonX highlighting the importance of long-term brand building and Emotions being a crucial motivating factor for B2B Buying groups. By leveraging data, understanding customer needs, and making smart choices - Brands need to have a voice and what values they stand for. Whether it's sustainability, Diversity, Quality, or Good for Society - anything that your audience cares about, should be your brand purpose.

CMOs are asking themselves how to bring big data to their brands, how to build emotional connectivity most efficiently at scale, and which creative metrics to use to predict performance. - Joanna Stringer, BCG

Pedigree - Adoptable

Pedigree launched an AI campaign “Adoptable” with Colenso BBDO and Nexus Studios which won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions for the best use of AI. Their mission is to increase dog adoption. They created this dynamic campaign to seamlessly advertise real shelter dog pictures with personalized location-based targeting. This way they are standing for tackling dog homelessness worldwide - a very honest and relevant brand purpose for Pedigree.

Renault - Cars to Work

According to a 2021 governmental report, around 20% of the working-age population in France has difficulty getting around due to a lack of transport options. As a result, as many as 28% of people entering the workforce opt out of employment or training - Contagious

Renault in March this year as a part of their brand’s wider campaign of “Caremakers inclusive mobility program” launched an initiative to provide solutions for new job starters who live in mobility deserts. They launched this one-of-a-kind financing solution where new job starters can start paying for the lease once they pass the job’s probation period.

“The Grand Prix reflects the essential goal we should achieve in advertising. It is an idea that is good for people and good for business. By helping people get the access they need to secure a job, Renault ends up selling cars and transforms consumers into loyal believers in the brand. It is a great example of a brave brand that cares, takes risks, and gets results.” - Sustainable Development Goals Lions jury president, Gustavo Lauria, co-founder, president and chief creative officer at We Believers, United States

As we march towards a cookie-less internet, brands are relying more and more on first-party data to get customer insights. This year there seemed to be a sense of acceptance of the inevitable. The entire industry is now focused on adapting to the future of Advertising. Both Personalization and Privacy rank as top priorities in the minds of consumers. Under such circumstances, brands are using AI and innovation on their owned platforms to mine data and behavior patterns.

As cookies decline retail media networks as a channel are getting Bigger. BCG, Microsoft, and retailers like Walmart, Target, and Expedia all spoke about the significance of this channel. Admittedly I heard of this channel first time as I was trying to catch up on the Conversations from Cannes Lions.

What is Retail Media Network(RMN)?

Retailers are becoming Media and Advertizing companies. Today we live our lives on platforms. Whether is booking a flight to ordering a cab ride on Uber or Lyft let's say watching Disney+ before a good night’s sleep. Each of these platforms has first-party data and has the potential to advertise relevant content to its visitors. Now if these platforms collaborated and built a data ecosystem to track consumer behavior as they move from one platform to the next and then target them with relevant advertising - that is when you land with high-quality ad targeting. Retail Media Network as a channel started rising only because of the depreciation of the cookies. But companies are slowly realizing its power.

This kind of ecosystem is a win-win for the Retailer and the Brand. This is a new business model for Retailers as more and more physical stores are getting shut down. Target’s advertising business bought $1.5B in value for the company and grew 20% in 2023. RMN is expected to grow $166B by 2025 and will account for 20% of digital media spend this year according to eMarketer.

RMN has much higher intent data because it can track the consumers buying behavior and thus ad targeting is a much lower funnel. Companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and BCG are hoping to unify the different networks and provide a platform for Marketers to make the right ad spend across the 200 media networks.

Summarizing all these high-level trends, it's evident that Marketing is moving to a consumer-centric ‘brand universe’. This is making brands more diverse and inclusive and using technologies like AI to scale and differentiate these ideas economically. The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity is celebrating this new reformed face of advertising and marketing.