Every year, the Cannes Lions 2024 International Festival of Creativity is the must-attend event for the advertising and communications industry. The aim: to celebrate trends, innovation and creativity.
With numerous award categories including advertising, digital craftsmanship, innovation... The Cannes Lions 2024 International Festival of Creativity celebrates excellence. Conferences, networking around topics such as innovation, social media, video and of course AI and creativity, Faustine and Loïck from the tydeo team spent two days there to get inspired.
What should we take away from the 2024 edition? Cannes Lions 2024 celebrated the transformative impact of AI and technology, while emphasizing the indispensable role of humanity in the creative process. Echoing an idea expressed by several speakers, Deepak Chopra summed it up this way: "The key to creativity is your soul."
Artificial intelligences are co-pilots
The transformative impact of AI on the creative industries was once again a central theme at Cannes Lions 2024. While to date its societal uses have focused mainly on efficiency and time-saving, Alex Schultz, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Analytics at Meta, was keen to highlight how AI could work in tandem with creatives: " By harnessing AI, we believe we can free ourselves from mundane tasks and focus on the aspects of our work that require real creativity " adding " we are the pilots, AI is the co-pilot." A view shared by Jared Spataro, vice president of AI at work at Microsoft, for whom AI is " a tool to expand creative openness, giving you more time, more space, more capabilities to bring your stories to life." Another GAFAM to invest in AI is Google, which presented its text-to-video AI tool, Veo, and the Astra project, which the company describes as " the future of AI assistants capable of processing multimodal information, understanding the context you're in and responding naturally in a conversation ".
Beyond the digital giants, other brands like L'Oréal are integrating AI into their creative toolbox. Asmita Dubey, the beauty and cosmetics giant's director of digital and marketing, took advantage of the festival to present the group's approach to generative AI for new consumer services and media buying, as well as the Gen AI beauty content lab dubbed " CreAItech " - a space for experimenting with new content creation tools.
Pedigree, a pet food company, also showed how it harnesses the capabilities of AI. The brand won the Adoptable Grand Prix, in the Corporate Purpose and Social Responsibility category. This initiative uses AI to highlight adoptable dogs. How? By transforming photos into high-quality studio images to create personalized ads of shelter dogs up for adoption using geographic targeting and proprietary data.
And if AI is now at the heart of communication campaigns, Orange has put deepfake (a mix of "deep learning" and "fake") to work for women's soccer with the "Women's Football" film produced by the Marcel agency. Objective: to break down prejudices surrounding women's soccer.
However, speakers such as Maria Ressa, CEO of the Philippine news website Rappler, call for vigilance. The winner of the Cannes LionHeart 2024, one of the Festival's most prestigious awards, drew parallels between AI's potential to distort the truth and her own experiences of resisting a political dictatorship. The risks associated with AI also came up in an exchange between Elon Musk and WPP CEO Mark Read. While Musk acknowledged that "it's the most interesting time in history", the billionaire said that, in his opinion, there would be a "10-20% chance of something terrible happening".
The idea comes from the heart and soul
While the Festival saw a consensus around AI as a powerful tool for creativity, another observation stands out: humanity, emotion or even humor, which AI can't replicate, offer the most authentic way to connect with consumers. Marc Pritchard, Brand Director at P&G, emphasized the importance of emotion and " thrills " in communication. " Even with all the technology we have, the answer isn't in data or algorithms. The answer lies in the idea, which comes from the heart and soul. AI doesn't feel tingling in the spine. Humanity counts." Echoing this view, Kyle Chaka, author of " Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture " and editor at The New Yorker, added: " AI is essentially automation, and I just don't think culture can be automated...."
Elon Musk is yet another dissenting voice. He said he was " convinced that AI is capable of both creativity and originality, and that we are therefore in danger of questioning our own value". The entrepreneur went so far as to make a prediction: " I think there may be a crisis of meaning. If AI can do everything you can do, only better, then what's the point of doing things? "
The power of personalization in advertising
At Cannes Lions 2024, personalization, which enables brands to deliver messages that resonate at an individual level, was highlighted as a key factor in advertising success. An approach that not only improves engagement, but also creates stronger bonds between brands and consumers. Among the trends: storytelling to reach out to communities, as in Renault's " Cars To Work " ad, signed by Publicis Conseil. The campaign highlights the brand's CareMakers scheme, which offers cars to the unemployed.
Staging the brand: bringing back a sense of showmanship
According to Adam Morgan of Eatbigfish and Jon Evans of System 1, advertising is in the midst of a "dullocalypse". Their session "The Extraordinary Cost of Boredom" revealed that more than half the ads tested trigger no emotional reaction, positive or negative, and are therefore deemed "boring". How can this boredom be explained? Speakers pointed to the role of technology combined with the quest for scale and efficiency. According to author Kyle Chayka, the trend towards an "iterative culture", where everything that succeeds is scaled up, " This will result in a single, interesting, lowest-common-denominator culture. " For his part, Sir John Hegarty, Orlando Wood, Director of Innovation at System 1, called on brands to bring back a sense of spectacle. Quoting Cicero's maxim "Selectare, docere, movere" (to delight, to teach, to move), Wood reminded us that these three elements are essential in advertising. A plea that dovetails with VML Intelligence data revealing that 65% of people in China, the UK and the USA "now want brands to wow them". Ynon Kreiz, Chairman and CEO of Mattel Inc, who was named "Entertainment Personality of the Year", took a risk. Kreiz emphasized the ambition behind the Barbie phenomenon, declaring: " It wasn't about trying to make a movie to sell more toys. It wasn't even about making a movie. The aim was to create a cultural event, to create a societal moment. That's how we defined it from the start. "
Comic connections
Continuing a trend already revealed in 2023, Cannes Lions 2024 focused on the growing consumer demand for "lightness". The winner of this year's Titanium Grand Prix exemplifies this trend. The " DoorDash All-the-Ads" campaign by Wieden+kennedy offered Super Bowl viewers the chance to win all the platform's products thanks to an unusual promo code... 1813 characters long. Humor and levity are precious keys, according to Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson, who declared that " if something is funny, you don't have to fight for your attention. You'll look for it. It's also a surefire way to connect with a mass audience. Humor disarms people. No matter what someone thinks of you or your message, a laugh is a brief moment when they let their guard down and allow you to get a little closer."
Humor was also present in other campaigns, as evidenced by the campaign for the CeraVe brand, which won the Social & Influencer Grand Prix. Signed Ogilvy PR New York, the ad plays on the resemblance between the brand's name and that of actor Michael CeraVe, who plays himself. The agency explained in a press release that its social listening research had enabled it to detect that for years, people had been asking on social networks whether Michael Cera was related to CeraVe. There was no connection between the two, but the brand saw an opportunity to seize on the situation with a sense of humor.
The creators' economy is growing
While creators have long been present at Cannes, 2024 saw a new program of dedicated content in collaboration with Viral Nation. Talented speakers included podcaster and former monk Jay Shetty, Generation Z historian Khalil Greene, comedy writer Steven He, comedian Jake Shane and lifestyle influencer Tinx (aka Christina Najjar). Influencer and talent agencies were also present alongside the social networking giants. This was an opportunity to highlight the growing power of the creator economy, with the launch of the Lions Creator experience to promote learning and networking between talent and agencies. According to figures from Goldman Sachs, the creative economy could reach a value of $480 billion by the end of 2027, and the growing presence of celebrities, influencers and creators at Cannes underlines this growing importance. Interviewed by Vogue Business, Grace Kao, Global Head of Commercial Marketing at Spotify, said, " For brands, creators represent a direct line to new and engaged audiences and a chance to ride the wave of our ever-changing culture."
The power of creators was in the spotlight in Coca-Cola's award-winning " Thanks for Creating " campaign. Created by WPP Open X and led by VML, with Essence Mediacom and Ogilvy PR, the global campaign celebrated local interpretations of its iconic logo by retailers and artists around the world. A sign that entrusting the reins of creativity from time to time - to creators or co-creators - can reap valuable rewards.
Finding creativity in everyday life
Finally, as VML Intelligence pointed out in its 2023 report "The Age of Re-Enchantment", the Festival was also an opportunity to highlight "a movement towards awe in the everyday and magic in the mundane". Marc Pritchard, brand director at P&G, talks about "finding creativity in the everyday", noting that P&G's personal care products - among them diapers, laundry detergent, soap, toothpaste, shower gel and toilet paper - " offer huge opportunities, because everyday moments are rich in creative potential."
Koji Yanai, group executive and board director of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. told the story of how he created Tokyo's toilets. An Oscar-nominated project, where a group of designers were tasked with redesigning some of Tokyo's public toilets for the 2020 Paralympic Games. The project was later made into a film by Wim Wenders, " Perfect Days ", which depicts the life of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.
Culinary influencer Alix Traeger, meanwhile, explained how her content shows " The messiness of real life.It's showing up without those barriers, letting loose and having fun. " Adding that this "unfiltered quality" is what appeals to her audience. "People...come up to me and say, ' You've inspired me to cook, because now I feel like I belong in the kitchen. "
Finally, Spotify proved that simple technology can still unleash compelling creativity. Spreadbeats' B2B campaign, which won the Grand Prix for Digital Craftsmanship, revived old compression and visualization techniques to transform individual cells to create the world's first spreadsheet-based music video.
French communications agencies honored at Cannes Lions 2024 International Festival of Creativity
French agencies left the Croisette with 48 Lions, including 4 Gold. The Publicis group stood out in particular.
Publicis Conseil, the group's founding agency, was named "Agency of the Year" for the first time in its history. In all, it was awarded 2 Grands Prix and 16 Lions, including the Renault x Dacia " Cars To Work" campaign . The Marcel agency was awarded the title of "Agency Entertainment of the Year", 2 Grands Prix and 8 Lions for the Orange " Women's Football " campaign. Publicis Luxe and Publicis Et Nous each won 1 Lion. The new generation also took part: 3 teams of Young Lions for Publicis Consultants, Publicis Luxe and Publicis Conseil each took home a Lion.
