Is It Time to Move Cannes Lions… Out of Cannes?

I attended the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for the first time last year – the annual rendez-vous of the advertising and marketing industry. For anyone in the field, it’s a golden opportunity to meet talented creative professionals from around the world and get inspired by world-class speakers and panelists, all while basking in the sunshine of Cannes.

In recent years, the festival has shifted in tone, with an increasing focus on sustainability and responsibility, reflecting the challenges of the world around us. Throughout the week, we listen to keynote speakers tell us that we as marketers can change the world, impact positive change, and create purposeful brands.

Key themes now include sustainability, DE&I, and purpose marketing. Many of the winners of last year’s awards had a sustainability and responsibility angle: a Molson Coors campaign encouraging farmers to transition to organic farming, a WeCapital campaign enabling credit access for unbanked women in Mexico, etc.

One emerges from the Palais conference center bright-eyed and optimistic, inspired to think about how we can enact change among our own brands.?

This well-intentioned, altruistic buzzy feeling lasts about the five minutes it takes to walk from the Palais to the long line of enormous boats harbored along the port just next door. It’s a strange feeling, applauding a campaign about funding microlending in Central America, then stepping onto a yacht. ?

Can one really champion sustainability and responsibility, while spending a week dipping in and out of upscale hotels and restaurants, with mainly very successful (and mostly American) people from the upper echelons of the advertising, tech and marketing industries? ?

How to resolve the cognitive dissonance of claiming to want to change the world, while living in an ultimately materialistic and business-driven bubble for a week?

The answer may lie in the name of the festival itself: Cannes.

Everyone in France knows that Cannes represents the stereotype of the monied C?te d’Azur way of life: an ultra-wealthy jet set crowd, flocking every summer to park their yachts, stay in five-star hotels, and shop in luxury boutiques.

It’s to be expected that such a destination will inevitably set the tone for any event which takes place there.

As Cannes Lions increasingly puts the focus on sustainability, responsibility and enacting positive change, perhaps it’s time to consider a move to a place more representative of those values.

After all, Cannes Lions didn’t always take place in Cannes. The festival’s first edition in 1954 took place in Venice (the lion logo is inspired by a statue on Piazza San Marco), before moving to Monte Carlo the following year and then Cannes in 1956.

Perhaps it’s time for another destination change, to keep up with changing times.

Many worthy destinations, such as forward-thinking green cities Amsterdam and Copenhagen, spring to mind. But there is one that is particularly synonymous with creativity: Berlin.

A bastion for progressive values, a growing tech and start-up hub, home to countless creatives and artists, and a global player in music and nightlife.

Instead of pitching up camp on the beach, which no delegate has time to enjoy anyway, why not have the ad and tech companies set up shop at Tempelhof, the former airport-turned-park just south of the city center?

And as for the weather, there’s no better time than June to be in Berlin – and with weather patterns getting more unpredictable, it rained half the time in Cannes last year anyway.

The festival could even keep its name – after all, Cannes Lions certainly has a nice ring to it. Why not take a page from Art Basel Miami’s book and rename the event Cannes Lions Berlin?

To attend Cannes Lions was a fantastic opportunity for which I remain truly grateful: I met some incredible people and was inspired by truly ground-breaking work, giving me hope that we as advertisers really can make a difference if we put our minds to it.

But as the week went on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, as much as I enjoyed the sunset parties on the random tech company yachts I was somehow let onto.

The frequent and rather dramatic Greenpeace interruptions, protesting the participation of ad and media agencies representing fossil fuel clients, did nothing but add to these existential questions.

As the world’s challenges become increasingly pronounced, perhaps it’s time for Cannes Lions to be as bold as the work they award, and consider a more authentic setting for the event, more aligned with the newfound values that the festival, and the brands which attend it, are increasingly promoting.

It could be a move which could turbocharge and reinvigorate the advertising industry’s potential to help rather than hinder society and the planet – a potential which may never be truly unlocked in Cannes, as enjoyable as a summer stroll down la Croisette may be.

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All views expressed are entirely my own.?