In marketing, humanity is how we differentiate

In my time working in marketing and advertising agencies, a huge part of the work’s validation and recognition came at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

But it’s become much more than that. Today, we attend the Cannes Lions to stay current with creativity. It’s an incredible gathering of marketers, thought leaders, creatives, experts and ideators; a great place to share what you believe about storytelling and creativity, as well as learn from others.

This year’s theme was creativity fuels progress. Creativity fuels all kinds of things that are fundamental pillars of marketing and advertising. It fuels provocation; tension; FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt); humor; dissonance; aspiration. But where does creativity come from — the kind of creativity that wins hearts, minds, awards, and new and returning customers?

The key is to be conscious of our repertoires, all the tools that we have and how we deploy those tools at the right time for the right audience. Those tools might be logical, analytical, or technical. Or they might be more human-centric things, like kindness, trustworthiness, or empathy. In the interests of sharing my learnings with my teams and colleagues at Lenovo, I kept notes on each day I spent at the Lions this year. And I found that each day, these human-centric themes came up again and again.

Tuesday’s Theme: Kindness

Key moments: CMOs in the Spotlight with Jim Stengel (the CMO Podcast), Menaka Gopinath (Project Management Institute), and Heather Hopkins Freeland (Adobe); an in-depth interview with Deloitte Digital; a session on AI PCs and Formula 1 partnerships with Emily Chang (Bloomberg), Don McGuire (Qualcomm), and Toto Wolff (Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team); catching up with Queen Latifah and sharing the story of Lenovo’s Evolve Small initiative together.

Jim is a fantastic moderator with a great way of teasing stories out of his guests; I loved the dynamic between all of us on stage. We covered so much ground: creativity, the work we love, what we’re proud of and why, what’s important to us as leaders and CMOs — and the importance of kindness and how it delivers better business.

There's a lot of evidence that points to the effectiveness of kindness in the workplace. I do my best to display it and encourage it as a leader, I look for it in my team members, and I believe customers remember authentic kindness as well. (It’s also something that we can and should be teaching our AI models.)

Are you working for somebody who values kindness, who is vulnerable, who understands that sometimes we have a bad day, and at the end of the day, you don't have to be harsh and critical to get things done? If the answer to that is yes, I believe you’re far more likely to bring more of yourself — your passion, your loyalty, your creativity — to your work. Kind leaders improve retention; they enhance the working environment; they teach future leaders important lessons.

Wednesday’s Theme: Trustworthiness

Key moments: Trustworthiness as a Top Priority with Willem Marx (The Wall Street Journal), Doug Martin (General Mills), and William White (Walmart), and CMO Insider with Business Insider.

The Wall Street Journal panel was fun, because we turned it around and got audience participation. We posed a marketing challenge, asked the audience to suggest solutions, and then shared how we tackled it ourselves. I loved sharing the story of Work For Humankind: Meet Your Digital Self; the General Mills conundrum was a fascinating example of well-executed crisis management and internal investigation; the Walmart story produced a lot of creative ideas surrounding the retail phenomenon of Black Friday. All of our discussions revolved around how to win — or win back — customer trust.

Buoyed by the energy of that panel, the Business Insider team was able to tease out some different insights than I had originally planned to talk about. That’s part of the beauty of Cannes — the spontaneity, the inspiration, the energy! We went deep on the voice of the customer: why it matters, and what you can do with it. The cornerstone of it is, again, trust. The customer trusts the brand to come through for them and provide a solution. When marketing is the vehicle by which the customer’s needs filter into the organization, we can’t afford to let them down. Gen Z especially places a high value on the trustworthiness of brands they interact with. Meanwhile, the organization trusts that marketing will convey the solution’s value with accuracy and creativity, and we can’t afford to let the business down, either.

This was also the day my team and I intentionally took the time to get out into the festival itself and listen to the judging of awards. In one instance, we were fortunate enough to hear three of the brands present and defend their cases who wound up winning. We also were able to hear the announcement of the Industry Craft Lions, where the jurors outlined exactly why campaigns were awarded the bronze, silver, gold, and Grand Prix. These were incredibly illuminating experiences on what makes a piece of creative work exceptional.

AI at Cannes

Let’s take a moment to talk about a recurring feature in many of the campaigns this year: AI. Last year, AI felt theoretical. This year, every brand had the opportunity to demonstrate how they had used it and what they had learned in the process.

For some, AI is disconcerting. For others, it represents the apogee of progress and the future. For me, AI and trust are irrevocably entwined.

In terms of our AI narrative at Cannes, Lenovo shared our hard work on the Work For Humankind: Meet Your Digital Self program about responsible AI. We shared the successes in our Evolve Small initiative and working with Queen Latifah to reproduce her likeness for the benefit of small businesses through AI. And we shared the more technical side of how we’re using AI in our advertising and media to help improve areas of targeting and context.

Underlining all of these was our unifying organization-wide commitment to transparency in the use of AI, and deploying it responsibly and ethically. Why? Because we don’t play games with our customers’ or our employees’ trust.

We know we have to be transparent about AI. We owe it to each other. That’s why we’ve put together an AI Governance Committee in the marketing organization, involving not only marketers but legal, ethics, and compliance experts. We conducted a survey to understand what our marketers were most concerned about or wanted to know more about, and based on the survey results, we've put together a training program.

I recently had my training session, and I found it incredibly valuable. We’ve only just scratched the surface, but already our marketers are practicing how to use AI responsibly and effectively in their everyday work, sharing learnings and best practices with each other.

Thursday’s Themes: Understanding and Adaptability

Key moments: The LinkedIn Collective panel with Gail Moody-Byrd (LinkedIn), Antonia Wade (PwC) and Taeko Yamamoto (Fujitsu).

I was so inspired by my fellow panelists and our moderator on Thursday. There were great, rich answers to a number of the different questions on how we’re thinking about marketing and advancing the role of CMOs today.

What struck me in particular was when Antonia said that 48% of CEOs surveyed by PwC worry that their organizations will be out of business in the next five to 10 years due to the massive transformations industries will soon see. That was shocking to hear. It was fantastic to unpack it together, to talk about how marketers have a responsibility to help the organization survive, and how we can put that into practice: largely through demonstrating understanding of ourselves, our markets and our customers, and doubling down on resilience and adaptability in the face of change.

On a personal level, growing up as a third culture kid who moved around the world, I had to embrace change, often. Different countries, different languages; first girl at an all-boys’ boarding school; first 5 year graduate of my high school which had just opened a middle school.? I had the opportunity to participate in an incredible 28-day wilderness experience, AWE, based on Outward Bound in the mountains of Yosemite as a teen that has led to my joining the OBCA board of directors years later. All of these things contributed to my understanding of myself and my surroundings, chipped away at my fear of the unknown, and gave me resilience and prepared me for the future instead.

Taking this into a professional marketing context, I’m a huge advocate of two things. The first is responsible, strategic experimentation. Encourage it, invest in it, set time and budget aside for it to test out if something will work or not — this is how Work For Humankind and Evolve Small both got started. And the second is listening to your gut. Investigate your feelings to find out if your gut is clenching from the discomfort of learning and trying new things, or if it’s clenching because this is really not a good idea. You have to be thoughtful. Don’t crush creativity, not your own nor someone else’s. You have to learn how to express your instincts in ways that others can work with.

Thursday rounded out with some great moments of connection with friends and agency partners. It was a last exhale on a very busy week, and I’m so grateful to everyone I got the chance to spend time with!

Today’s themes: Planning for the future

When we attended the Cannes Lions with Lenovo for the first time in 2023, we learned about the importance of continuing to advance the creative agenda at Lenovo, and the importance of having a point of view as marketers. We explored. We learned. And we took what we learned and applied it to this year’s experience, finding new ways to share our story and how we’re pushing boundaries.

With two years under our belts, we know we don’t want to lather, rinse, and repeat. Next year, we’re going to step it up, be even more purposeful, think about things a little differently. We’re hoping to share the experience with top talent at Lenovo. It’s a huge investment, but it’s worth it to invest in people who can get a lot out of the experience.

We also learned to do what I’m doing right now: reflecting, collecting findings, and sharing them back. I believe it’s vital for anyone who attends conferences, festivals, and events to do this. What did we learn? What did we see? What do we think we need to keep doing? What would we change or do differently?

I’m proud to be a continuous learner, and I’m glad Lenovo gives me the space and encouragement to not only invest in this part of myself, but share it forward with others. After all… creativity fuels progress!