Cannes Lions 2024 felt like a transitional year. Companies and leaders anticipated artificial intelligence will drive dramatic changes in the near-future, but not quite yet.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, predicted on-stage that we could see a big shift from AI within 12 months and that AI will become “creative”.
Several themes emerged about the state of the festival and the wider industry during Cannes week:
Cannes Lions is getting busier
If the number of award entries is a barometer of health, then a roughly flat performance, with 26,753 entries (down less than 1% versus a year ago) was perhaps one indicator of an industry catching its breath after a pandemic bounceback. Recent financial results from the big agency groups have shown creative agencies are under pressure.
On other measures, Cannes Lions was “busier” this year, as many attendees observed anecdotally, with people keen to meet face to face.
Parent company Ascential said there was a “strong” increase in attendance, up from 12,000 last year, although it has not yet published an exact figure.
More affordable delegate passes for start-ups and creators helped to drive up attendance, according to Cannes Lions, which has also seen more marketers from big brands buying passes because they like to go into the Palais conference centre to watch sessions and view the work.
Delegate and sponsorship revenue were both up by “double-digit” percentages. Sponsorship has risen nearly sixfold from £6 million ($ 7.61 million) in 2014 to £34 million ($ 43.1 million) in 2023–as is evident from the array of corporate branding on the rented beaches, buildings and hotels along the Croisette.
The actual number of industry people who flock to Cannes Lions is ikely to be far in excess of 12,000 because thousands meet on the fringes of the festival, without paying for a pass for the Palais.
Creative work moves into a post-purpose era but needs to be shorter
It was striking that some of the jury presidents said they had felt “empowered” by Cannes Lions to look beyond social purpose when recognising work.
The industry has moved into a “post-purpose” era, as Marco Venturelli, the jury president of the Outdoor Lions, noted on the first day.
Yet social impact still matters and some of the best work had genuine purpose such as “Transition body lotion” by Vaseline and Ogilvy Singapore, which won the Glass Lion for Change Grand Prix.
Despite the pre-Cannes excitement about a new “use of humour” category, it did not crop up much during the jury press conferences about the work.
However, two gold winners in the Film Lion category were recognised for humour on the final day – “Sammakorn not Sanpakorn” from Thai housing developer Sammakorn and agency Choojai and Friends and “Trains” from Uber and Mother London.
Tor Myhren, the jury president of the Film Lions, urged the industry to get better at making shorter ads, warning a lot of film entries were too long and would have benefitted from being tighter.
Connecting media and data to sales
It can sometimes seem as if multiple festivals are taking place at Cannes Lions at the same time because different sectors have such different priorities.
The rise of retail media and the ability to use identity and audience data to drive sales and outcomes were recurrent themes in conversations with digital media and tech businesses.
AI is already having an impact as it allows tech platforms to predict audience segments, rather than rely on advertising cookies for targeting, and to generate and personalise creative assets dynamically.
Musk credited TikTok for its use of AI “to understand a user’s interests and then you match content with that user–both organic content and paid content”, adding Meta had “more or less copied them” and he planned for X to do the same.
Cannes is becoming more inclusive but inequalities persist
The festival has been making efforts to become more inclusive, offering in the region of 500 free delegate passes as part of its ERA initiative to improve equality, representation and accessibility.
Women’s sport, in particular, had a higher profile at this year’s festival and Orange and Publicis' Marcel won two Grand Prix awards for Film and Entertainment For Sport for “WoMen’s football”.
And yet tensions persisted. Cindy Gallop, the president of the Glass Lion jury, said there were multiple examples during the live judging process where a male team member from an entrant company spoke over a female colleague or dominated the presentation and she said the jury would be giving feedback privately.
Nishma Patel Robb, the president of Wacl, hosted an event on representation where the all-female line-up discussed why progress on gender equality and other aspects of inclusion was too slow and how “the men want to get back to talking about AI”.
Musk’s own appearance, in conversation with Mark Read, the chief executive of WPP, raised some concerns.
It is understood that Unite, a WPP employee group for LGBTQ staff, wrote to Read to express disappointment ahead of the session because of X’s track record on gay and trans issues. Read sought to defuse criticism by pointing out at the start of the session that he did not agree with everything Musk says.
Beyond the bubble
Cannes week is an industry bubble, as exemplified by Publicis Groupe’s “taking the BS out of AI” video that mocked industry rivals.
Maria Ressa, the founder of Philippines news site Rappler and a former CNN journalist, helped to puncture the bubble in her session on the final day.
Ressa has faced multiple legal battles with her country’s government and she delivered an impassioned talk about the importance of truth and facts in the face of threats to democracy around the world, fuelled by the weaponisation of social media and advertising technology and now AI.
“Illiberal” leaders are being elected by democracy, she warned, noting this is a big election year with snap parliamentary elections in France and the US presidential vote.
Her warning is a reminder that the geopolitical climate could shape the short-term future more than AI–particularly for a global advertising industry that continues to bet on free trade and progressive values.
Gideon Spanier is UK editor-in-chief of Campaign