Reflecting on my week at Cannes Lions 2022

I’m writing this on the plane heading back from Nice after a week in Cannes for the annual festival of creativity, using the short flight to reflect on and share my takeaways from a week of being inspired – also to avoid having to tackle my outlook inbox! I realise looking back at the week that I would normally tweet a lot from an event and use my social feed to note what’s important or striking – but this time I’ve gone old-school and written notes by hand, although often in dark auditoriums meaning I’m now not entirely sure what they say. Cannes is the kind of event where the content and conversations are so deep, random, and serendipitous that 140 characters just isn’t enough. I also wanted to soak it all up – and come back to my thoughts at the end of the week with a better framing of what’s important.

PR sort of showed up

If you read any of the PR trade media there is a shared view that PR is yet to truly breakthrough at the event. And I agree. While many agencies were there – some with physical spaces to host events and meetings, some there working the event and using it as an opportunity to learn, and some there because they were up for Cannes Lions awards – but certainly very few of my client/brand-side industry peers seemed to be in town. PR was equally underrepresented on stage. There were some fringe events where comms leaders were speaking, but we were hard to find anywhere near the main stages of the Palais. And disappointingly rarely featured in the campaign work 'credits' from the award-winning work – something that has to change.

DE&I and sustainability featured in EVERYTHING

Not unexpectedly DE&I and sustainability were front and centre of all the discussions. I’m not in any way diminishing the imperatives these are for our industry or the world, but by the end of the week I felt the impact was diminished – will a lot of platitudes and substance-free nods to DE&I and sustainability. There are of course exceptions – not least the insightful discussion from Teneshia Warner at Egami and Barby Siegel at Zeno on agency allyship; the work that the UN Development program is doing to spotlight the possibility of world extinction , and some thoughtful words and food for thought about female leadership in male-dominated industries by women leaders hosted at the Bloomberg ESG House – including Kate Jhaveri from NBA, Sarah Personette from Twitter, and Tara Rush from Audi. And of course the moving and heartfelt words from Malala . These imperatives will still be just as critical in 12 months’ time when I hopefully head to Cannes again, but we have to show progress beyond what was discussed this year – in particular in how we nurture diverse talent, how we build insights into the work to ensure we reflect the communities we are trying to reach and engage, and how we use our power and creativity for good when it comes to driving a more sustainable world.

Broaden our definition of inclusivity

One of the best campaigns on show was Decathlon’s Breakaway campaign (thanks to Stuart Yeardsley for flagging this one to me and framing the campaign thinking in this way), where together with BBDO Belgium created the first ecycling team made up of prison inmates. This work won Grand Prix awards for both Creative Strategy and PR - deservedly so. It reframed how we think about some of the most marginalised communities that are largely invisible to everyday society and was perfectly aligned to Decathlon’s brand purpose of making sports accessible. The Belgian Minister of Justice experienced racing with the team himself, and since seeing the positive impact it’s had on the mental health of prisoners, has now expanded the program to all prisons in Belgium, noting that it will be part of his “long-term vision for a more meaningful detention”. Talk about goosebumps - now that is lasting change and impact!

Movements, not moments

You can thank Judy John , global creative director at Edelman, who delivered this soundbite on stage on Thursday evening while presenting the Cannes Lions PR category . It perfectly sums up my takeaway feeling from walking through and reviewing all the PR award entries – ie that many were stunts, fun but fleeting moments in time that don’t drive lasting or meaningful change, and critically for me didn’t show the impact on long-term reputation. A notable exception here is Honduras ‘Morning After Island campaign ’ and the Decathlon Breakaway campaign.

I know Cannes is a celebration of creativity, but creativity shouldn’t just be celebrated for the sake of it. It has to drive lasting change, otherwise what’s the point? Cannes Lions entries are not alone in not recognising this – I see this through many other awards programs I judge for our industry, and I find it hugely frustrating that the long-term, hard slog, really impactful reputation-shifting work is rarely if ever, considered award-winning. This needs to change.

Comms is best at leading on purpose, but….

While we have a seat at the table maybe we need a big carver chair rather than the wobbly 3-legged stool we’re sitting on now. As Paul Holmes of PRovoke Media said at this CEO roundtable “purpose is an obligation, not an opportunity”, Judy John of Edelman said on stage “you can’t buy fame, you have to earn it”, and Brian Melarkey of FleishmanHillard said at the PRovoke CEO roundtable “campaigns versus commitments” – that’s where we are at our strongest, do the best work, and can counsel the business accordingly with key questions “Why do we exist?” and “Is the world better or worse off without us, and why?”. It’s why I am trying to ban the phrase thought leadership – we need actions (action leadership) not words, and it is our job in comms to drive that.

We need to change how Cannes Lions measures comms

By far the majority of the entries I saw for the PR categories used impressions, reach, and engagement as the measures of success – and of course, the good old thud factor earned media ‘coverage’. Most focused their measurement on outtakes (primarily engagement) – a little on outcomes (changed attitudes, increased advocacy, etc), and rarely, if at all, on real impact (social or policy change, increased sales, etc). Reputation seemed to be missing as a construct for measurement and horrifyingly I still even saw AVE creeping in but couched as ‘equivalent media spend/value’. If I were judging I would discount any entry that included this as a measure of success and imagine AMEC agrees on this point. Maybe this isn’t the fault of those providing the entries, but more what’s required from the formula to win a Cannes Lions – if so it’s time for us to start lobbying to celebrate and measure the (creative) impact of PR award entries in a fundamentally different way.

Our industry is incredible, inspiring, and innovative

The campaigns being done, the creativity and innovation on show, the bright minds on stage and so much more. There were times when I felt we might be taking ourselves a little too seriously or believe what we do is life and world-changing (granted sometimes it is), but overall I have been reminded about the many good humans in this space, the pride we can take in our work, and feel grateful to have spent a week together with them.

FWIW here are my newbie top five tips for thriving and surviving Cannes Lions:

1. Buy a ticket to the Palais activities - don’t just rely on the fringe events. The breadth of content may seem overwhelming but there were some truly outstanding sessions. Check out the smaller theatres which I found often had more interesting activities. Shout out here in particular to the great session with Rankin Caroll of Mars and Awing Chen from DDB China who presented on how they had to rethink launching Skittles in China.
2. Pace your day so that you have gaps between sessions – the queues for some of the flagship stages (Luminiere, Debussy, Forum) have such long queues that you can’t make back-to-back events work.
3. Learn to live with FOMO – there is soooooo much, you will never be able to see it all. Think about the handful of broad topics you’re interested in learning about and build an agenda around those.
4. Embrace those serendipitous moments – in fact, some of the best conversations I had and connections I made were chatting next to strangers in a queue, waiting for a session to start, or even in the boarding queue for the return flight from Nice this morning. And equally when you’re too far back in the queue and don’t make it into the auditorium, just find another event at the same time to go to – sometimes something completely random will light an unexpected fire for you.
5. Wear REALLY comfortable shoes/trainers ??

I couldn’t close this piece without noting the incredible start to Cannes Lions on day one. Firstly Richard Edelman and Garry Kasparov launched the RegainUkraine initiative , followed by creative colleagues from Ukraine sharing their challenges, their opportunities, and how they have turned their lives upside down to fight the war either directly through military service, or indirectly through initiatives such as United24 or donating media space through the DonateMedia platform (link to come when I track down the right one).

In short – my week at Cannes was everything I hoped for. A chance to pause, to think, to learn – and to come back energised and inspired. Would I go again next year? In a heartbeat. And you can bet I’ll be working over the next 12 months to have PR better represented and included in the years to come – if you’re interested in joining me to help lobby for that charge with Cannes Lions let me know.