Cannes Lions 2016: What You Missed, Even If You Were There.
Above photo courtesy of Kurt Wagner @ Recode.
I’ve just returned from the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and while there was a lot of great work to be seen, there was most definitely a set of themes that ran through nearly every conversation overheard on the Croisette.
I’ve distilled them below, a mix of personal experiences, and ones shared with me by other advertisers, media buyers, publishers, and creatives.
Facebook, Google and the commoditization of mobile ad formats.
The platform duopoly of Facebook and Google spent a lot of time engaging with advertisers at Cannes, ensuring that groundbreaking new formats like Facebook Live and Oculus were experienced by the right decision-makers. But when it came to the core ad unit, the sponsored post, I caught a potentially disturbing glimpse of the future of mobile ads. In a world where publishers’ dominance has been replaced by the emergence of a select few platforms at an unprecedented level of market penetration, we now have a situation brewing where creative agencies are being told what to make, and in what formats to make them, and if they’re not “good enough” at doing it, the platforms will make them for the brands themselves.
The problem with this is the inherent bias. Creativity, ideas, and great advertising and/or content is scarce. But Facebook will have you believe that it’s formulaic and prescriptive; follow the rules and it will work. Reach and frequency no longer have to be scarce, now that everything is all digital; but on Facebook, their scarcity is (understandably) artificially constructed to support an incredibly high-margin business model.
There’s a big downside to Facebook’s dominant ad model: The more consumers are exposed to the same ad units at a controlled frequency, the more they will tune them out. We already know that audiences don’t spend much, if any time with advertising on the platform, yet frequent exposure to them is being proven to be effective at driving offline sales. Cram as much as you can in the first three seconds of any ad, because that’s all that will be in-view during a typical Facebook user session.
Does that sound familiar to you? It should. These are banner ads.
Facebook is clearly making the business decision to make the platform’s primary ad format, sponsored posts, as easy as possible to replicate, with the brief being “how much can you deliver in three seconds or less”? In one of my meetings someone brought up “blipvertising” from the 80’s TV series Max Headroom. Those “blips” were three-second ads. Hey! We’re living in the future! Here’s the problem with that: Max Headroom was a dystopian vision of the future. It was what the future could look like if we weren’t careful with the application of technology. Now, we’re already there as far as advertising goes. Sad! Media should exist in service of, or even be a part of the “big idea”. But instead, it keeps finding equilibrium as a commodity that can get bought, sold, or traded on exchanges.
And yeah — those commoditized ads are working. For now. But how long is it before consumers develop banner blindness again? How long before every ad in each category starts looking the same, in the same ad format? I’ve seen people “ooh” and “ahh” over promoted posts on Facebook that we saw 8 years ago in rich media ads. This decrease in performance will happen, or at least get way more difficult to predict, and we may very well be seeing peak Facebook ad results. I’m keeping an eye on this space, but also towards the more promising formats on Instagram, Live, Oculus, and Messenger, while we squeeze as much as we can out of standardized formats.
Is “creative” just a leading indicator of — and not the trigger — of success?
My answer is a big-time “no”. But this industry makes me nervous.
As more data informs planning, buying, and creative development, the industry is starting to deliver on the promise that reaching the right person with the right message at the right time with the right attribution will yield the most sales. And that’s what marketing’s job is, right? To drive sales?
Here’s the problem: If we spend all of our time trying to reverse-engineer brand studies, or same-quarter sales, we’re not seeing the whole picture. Brands are built over time. Strong, visionary brands outlive recessions, recalls, bad quarters, and other unpredictable events. As increasingly more dollars are shifted to digital media, we get hooked on attribution. What did that ad do? What did that dollar do? How many brands have you seen over the last couple of years change their message and audience wildly? My guess is many. They are hunting and pecking for the formula that works, instead of getting to the bottom of who they are and owning it and letting that guide the big idea to shape it’s future, while more direct, attributable media does the hard work of selling product now. The creative mix is as important as the media mix. But as is the topic of discussion these days, media is where the money is.
Ideas don’t even have to be real to win at Cannes anymore.
Read this short piece in Ars Technica.
Done? Done throwing up in your mouth? Good.
The ad industry has gotten so used to believing its own hype, that agencies have just cut straight to “hype”. As we define it, “creativity” must be more than just an idea. It must be about bringing that idea to life. As you read it, remember, that this. is official communication from an executive at an ad agency. If you don’t have to actually bring your ideas to life. to win at Cannes, then I’d like to submit my dreams to next year’s Lions. If only I could get the press to write about them…
There will be a “publisher content studio” correction.
Publisher content studios, established to create premium content (or, in other words, “premium ad inventory” to compensate for increasingly programmatic ad sales and delivery) are increasingly finding themselves caught in a tough spot. They are neither editorial nor marketing; neither publisher nor agency. This is on full display, as. advertisers’ expectations are not being met by many of these revenue and loss-generating teams. Publishers create content as the result of media commitments, but branded content teams aren’t briefed that way. And when performance of publisher-created content is held up to the same scrutiny as creative agencies’ advertising is, there is an effectiveness gap. While not true for all content studios (and some. are doing a great job at being collaborative with both media and creative agencies), their existence is being questioned externally, which means it’s only a matter of time before that existence is questioned internally.
The creative process is commercial.
It’s great that agencies bring out talent like Sharon Stone, Will Smith and Carly Rae Jepsen to Cannes. It really is. And I’m sure their stories about their creative processes are really inspiring. But one thing to remember. — especially now — is that these are people who have made their careers by doing work so good, that people will pay to see it. They take risks (Seven Pounds, anyone?) with upside. The ad industry speaks to audiences that are willing to pay to get rid of us. For most brands, their messaging is not welcome. The only way to overcome that is to become legitimately culturally relevant and culturally connected, which is very, very hard to do. So while I’m glad creatives get to hear what Will Smith has to say, it should serve as a reminder that before we are in the business of selling stories to consumers (or even movie studios), we are in the business of selling ideas to clients (by convincing them it’s a cost of doing business to sell more of their products). There is a lot that can get lost in translation between points A and B.
The next generation of creatives will be way more entrepreneurial. They will be able to live off the quality of the ideas they can bring to life, and be able to sell them in the marketplace. The ideal creative business environment won’t be a classically structured agency, but connected lean organizations or groups that collaborate fluidly. The first generation to discover this has been what we typically call “influencers” or “creators”. Some are way better at “creative” with others. Some just copy and past their publicist’s emails. It’s clear who brands will want to work with. The next generation will self-organize into the roles needed to make stuff that brands will want to buy and people will want to pay for (or at least appreciate).
“Live” is real. And real tough.
Much was made about “live” video at Cannes. We know there’s a generation that wants to capture and broadcast live video as much as, if not more than, any other kind of video. But “live” doesn’t always work, and it isn’t always good. With Twitter (Periscope) and Facebook leading the conversation, it’s clear that the live format will be a topic of conversation for a while. Good “live” content, content a critical mass would find interesting enough to watch and share, has to meet my “4S” criteria to work: scarcity (how many other places can I watch this?), spectacle (will something go spectacularly wrong or spectacularly right?), simultaneity (does the viewing experience benefit from watching it with other people?), and span (is it long enough for people to discover live in real-time?).
Today’s crop of live content succeeds, in part, because of the newness of the medium and format for many audiences. But as it becomes more commonplace, more scrutiny will be placed on quality. People won’t just want live content, they’ll want great content, some of which happens to be live. Brands will learn to master the 4Ss, and I’ll bet we see some strong executions at Cannes next year. I’ll also bet that Twitter x Periscope becomes the cultural norm for broadcasting live video, while Facebook Live becomes a vehicle for more highly produced live content — and ultimately becomes an app/channel of its own.
I did a live interview at Twitter’s beachside venue on the future of all things live and social. You can watch it by clicking on the below.
It’s a matter of trust.
The spectre of the ANA’s media agency transparency report loomed large in Cannes — but unsurprisingly it was not a major topic of conversation; it’s a total downer when you’re on a yacht. Instead, in a case of déjà vu, the anxiety manifested itself in the numerous media agency reviews in play.
Even though global advertisers have historically attended Cannes to be inspired by creative, increasingly, Cannes is becoming a place to collect awards, meet with platforms, get entertained by expense accounts, and bask in the glow of whichever Grammy Award-winning musician a publisher paid to croon for ad dollars. It’s the ad economy, in caricature form. Fun, yes. But also a reminder that it’s money that makes the ad world go ‘round.
Snapchat is a monster.
Snapchat did Cannes as I can only imagine 1986 MTV would have done it. People sought Snapchat out. It was definitely the coolest media brand there. They had a beautiful, unbranded location next to the Palais. The Snapchat ghost was in the security trays at JFK. Founder & CEO Evan Spiegel surprised everyone by showing up. Other, more traditional media companies wanted an audience with them because they offer an increasingly valuable content distribution channel. They were on the tips of most advertisers’ tongues, even while those tongues were sipping rose at other companies’ parties. Advertisers are readying their commitments to the Snapchat, and I expect that the platform’s more mature approach to data, audience targeting, and attribution will go a long way towards making them a critical part of advertisers’ digital plans in 2017.
People don’t know the difference between 360-degree video, virtual reality, and augmented reality — and that’s ok.
360-degree video, virtual reality, and augmented reality were seemingly used interchangeably, even though they all mean something different. The New York Times took home gold for their Google Cardboard experience The Displaced, which is not quite 360-degree video, and not-quite truly virtual reality (by Oculus Rift/HTC Vive/PlaystationVR/Samsung Galaxy Gear standards).
Google’s “Tilt Brush” was still a big hit, a brilliant live example of creativity and creation meeting technology and art.
These enhanced and immersive experiences were amongst the most inspiring at the Festival for many. They are also the hardest to own and create as a brand. I expect that the next 12 months will be filled with branded activity in the space, trying to find the magic that can potentially lie at the intersection of what consumers want to experience and what brands want them to understand. This is all next-generation immersive creativity, and it will be fascinating to see what brand dollars do to/with the format.
There was a lot to be inspired by at this year’s Cannes Lions, in the form of amazing work done by brilliant creatives from around the world. But increasingly, it’s becoming an annual trip I make to visit the chip on my shoulder, and come back with increased, rejuvenated motivation to overcome the real challenges our industry faces: diversity, mediocrity, and commoditization.
Like my report? Please recommend it to (and share with) your friends & colleagues.
