Creativity Takes Courage

We are a month out from the festival of courage and inspiration (aka the Cannes Lions). While many of us are settling into the slower days of summer and back to the grind, this is the time of year I fall in love again with Cannes and come home full of inspiration. 

• I fall in love with ambition. 
• I fall in love with daydreams that have turned into real day solutions.  
• I fall in love with the culture of bravery- one that reminds me every year and every time that anything is possible through the power of human ambition and intuition. 
• I fall in love with magic of creativity and the logic of creativity. And every year this intersection of magic and logic inspire us and takes us to places we have never been. 

The festival is a gathering more than an awards show where people get recognised for some great looking Lions. And they should get recognised as that’s what our industry needs more than anything to grow; to better and to advance positive ideologies and help eliminate negative influence. This intersection is what this festival of courage is all about and represents. And when these two representations come together you see our industry at its best. You see brands flourish and ideas that solve real world problems. 

2023’s Cannes Festival kicked off my Summer of Magic and Logic by demonstrating:

1. Perspective: I saw perspective. An intentional perspective to evolve marketing thinking and brand ambition. There were lots of examples where marketing really transformed itself with a perspective to move to the future using enablers such as AI, Machine learning and data centricity to advance a point of view resulting to a point of difference. 

From creative commerce that showed AI and algorithms to predict your food order, to using data points to assess a brands worth going back 100s of years, or preserving a language using an machine learning technology. Perspective is a crucial CMO trait, especially now. It should be what drives us all and it starts by understanding that the future is for the brave, the future is for those that use enablers to enhance their creative story telling- and embracing the unknown to stand out. Brands, agencies and CMOs with perspective are the ones we need to look at and get inspiration from.  

2. Humility: I witnessed humility. About bringing a sense of purpose in everything created for long term commitments. We are responsible for brands that are there to serve a purpose bigger than profit- if marketing is done right, that’s what it should do. Utility and humility were on display at the festival. Lots of breath taking examples that showed brands and marketing helping humans find homes, resolving fair migration, pushing for inclusion, helping end wars, creating a better planet, breaking down stereotypes- and promoting basic humanity.  The best examples and stories were all about brands being humble and knowing that they exist to do something more. Humility grounds us so we can never get ahead of ourselves. 

3. Empathy. I sensed empathy. Empathy is the first step of design thinking. Empathy is about crafting and building brands that are for all and not for some, putting the consumer and audience in the forefront.  Marketing on display at the festival showed how brands can be uber empathetic and put the user first.  This includes brands that acted human by making sports democratic and accessible for all to enjoy and by creating a mouth pad for folks with quadriplegia so they can interface with their computers (that was one of ours by the way) and utilising spatial audio technology to allow a visual impaired journalist to follow his dream about broadcasting a sports game! This is empathy and the true definition of magic and logic. This is putting others first; and when done right- it really ensures our marketing can push share-holder value and things important for the high street. We are always torn between Wall Street and High Street KPI’s. Separate streets; difference values in most cases. Focusing on empathy for the High Street- will benefit both streets in the long run. 

Cannes 2023 was the festival where empathy, humility and perspective were shining and on display. And no other industry in the world can perhaps bring these human values together to ensure we create ideas and inspiration that serve a bigger purpose.