Should you still spend an obscene amount of money and attend Cannes Lions?
Definitely if you want to declare residency inside the warm and cozy rectal cavity of a Holding Company CEO, otherwise forget it.
In 2015 already, advertising legend , Jeff Goodby said he won’t be coming back to Cannes Lions, because he could not explain to the taxi driver taking him back to the airport what he actually saw during that week. From there it went down in a tailspin. What used to be called the International Advertising Festival until 2011 became the Festival of Creativity . That makes it broad enough to cover anything you want including best AI generated Rosé. Honestly did you see one real adman in your feeds? I have not. I believe it’s an extinct specie. Next time you go to Cannes start taking pictures of the last ones around , they’re almost gone unless you still insist on calling Holding Company’s CEO’s admen.
As for the work, I no longer know what is real from what is fake proactive stuff, and I have given up on loosing my marbles on that subject. My only genuine question is how come the “Unloved Woolf”, by Intermarche got humiliated with barely 2 bronze lions, while it was spontaneously seen by more than a Billion people over Christmas. What were the various juries thinking?? Was there any adman in any room? Beating all algorithms flat out to reach more than a Billion views did not go well for the adtech brothers I guess.
I think it is time to surrender. Call it the Cannes Platforms festival. Celebrate the speeches of Mark Zuckerberg calling his organization a creative agency. Park the few remaining adpeople in a zoo next to an other specie on the verye of extinction. Bring back the most creative Holding Company award, and give it to the most profitable one.
Voila! Time for some well deserved Rosé to drown my sorrow!
