What does Madonna partying in Miami have to do with our industry?

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the long established epicentre for brands, technology, advertising. It has transformed in recent years from the rosé drinking advertising agency classes of the Carlton Hotel terrace to huge beach front tech platform parties. This of course a well-documented ‘entertainment echo’ to the awards and the work, which everyone cites is the real reason for being there. Because of the work, talking up the work, seeing what is awarded worldwide and setting the standard. The work the work the work.?

But the awards are a culmination of a long cycle, starting months in advance, where creative and strategic brains from agencies and brands have done the hard slog and are letting off steam and slapping each other’s backs.?

So where does this great cycle of ad life begin? It feels less and less like it starts in the Zoom ravaged empty corridors of our top agencies. Nor inside the creative directors’ desolate winter office as they scramble to get end of year revenues together to the demanding CFO. In a world where creative comes from everywhere. Where PR is all encompassing and everything. Where talent and collaboration are part of any resonating big idea.?

It increasingly starts in Miami, Florida and Art Basel.?

This is the inspiration trigger. A cultural hot spot, a clash and collision of forces who come together and mix up in the most stylish of primordial soups. What begun as a privately owned Swiss art fair in the 1970s grew into something last week wholly different from its origins but dripping in influence.?

We’d decided to send a small team from ICONIC ICONIC to get involved, capture, document, amplify all that was great and good. Nothing epitomised the nature of the cultural fashion of the week more than our own little company WhatsApp group for the event; From managers of some of the biggest names in dance culture, to CEOs of the most prestigious art magazines, via CMOs of sports apparel brands to gallery owners to Web3 artists and beyond.?

The week had everything to start the ideas which will win big in the future. House music one minute, World Cup watch parties the next. Beautiful oil paintings on canvas get consumed next to mind bending web3 futurist digital realities. From skate parks with the most gorgeous graffiti to art made out of shipping containers. From dance music royalty like Jamie Jones, to the incomparable Honey Dijon DJ’d parties which had Madonna in attendance, (yes, dancing alongside likes of Zoe Kravitz and Kim Kardashian) But the celebrity fuelled veneer seen on every social is only the surface and it is underneath where the richness can be found.?

This was culture as it is right now. This is sports and music and fashion and gaming and technology and art totally crossing over. Where one cultural passion point mutually fuels another, entwined and overlapping entities. This is the epitome of the cultural multiverse, where you can flit between the most incredible virtual runway from Adidas Web 3 studios trying on garments inside a digital new reality, then immediately rest your mind from the maelstrom in one of the thousands of art gallery exhibits. These consumers fresh off their flights think nothing of the juxtaposition either; Cheering World Cup goals downtown just before cheering legendary DJs, but stopping off at Web3 artist gallery private views in between.?

Right now, this is culture. An elegant chaos ripe for inspiration in all that we do. No wonder so many arrive in December on the Florida shores with an insatiable thirst for all things cultural, coming away inspired and surprised in equal measure. If Cannes Lions in June is where our industry gather excitedly as they hand out the Gold, then this little beach side advent adventure is where the alchemy first happens.?