During the opening session of Lions Live, the online version of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Simon Cook, MD, Cannes Lions, stated that cancelling the physical festival was an extremely difficult decision.
The event was first rescheduled to October before being completely ruled out due to the ongoing pandemic.
"It feels like a long time ago that we made the decision to postpone when the global pandemic hit. Then the decision to cancel followed. It was very hard and emotional for the team involved," said Cook.
He added that the decision to cancel the festival was arrived at after several conversations with the industry.
He said, "We wanted to take out all ambiguity after discussions with the fraternity around the world and cancelled the physical event. Then they told us that they still want the 'creative reboot' they get from the festival so we came up with this online event. Over the next five days we will see some great content from the industry. This is an initiative by the industry for the industry."
Lions Live will be running between 22-26 June. The festival is scheduled to be back in 2021.
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