Creativity and Performance – Best Friends or Uneasy Bedfellows?
In Sydney Lumet’s film Network, a TV network cynically exploits a mentally ill ex-TV anchor's epiphany about the media for its own profit. Used recently to great effect in an advertisement for a power company, the film provokes interesting reflection on our industry today. There are some differences of course. Mental health has become something people talk about openly. We question the way our news is delivered to us, and deliberate ‘facts’ over ‘truths'.
Looking at the themes for this year’s Cannes Lions, from how brands relate to culture, to future-proofing creative organisations, to winning in the digital economy, to solving trust, ethics and transparency, what will be the hottest topics on the beach?
Some things never change on the Croisette. Creatives will talk about the work, as is right and proper. There’s no shortage of predictions for the Grand Prix winners: Nike’s Dream Crazy, adidas’ Billy Jean King Your Trainers, and my own personal favourite - Pernod Ricard’s reflection on the time we have left with friends, a super smart use of data to remind us of universal human truth.
As Oscar Wilde put it, we still crave to be talked about. Brands resonating with culture will be deeply discussed over a glass of rosé. It’s also interesting how many awards will be picked up by the consultancies that have entered the agency business with acquisitive velocity. Droga5 and The New York Times’ Truth or New York Public Library’s InstaStories or even Rothco’s heart warming Proud Dad for Dublin Bus are decent contenders. (I love this last one not just because I used to get the Number 8 bus from Dalkey every day but for celebrating how far Irish culture has come in embracing equality and diversity.)
These are emotionally charged executions, but do they all reflect the needs for ads that work in 90 countries and at scale, for multiple brands? Clients will be pleased to be winning awards as much as anyone else, but I suspect that behind closed doors at the Martinez or the Carlton more complicated hot topics will abound. Logistics. Effectiveness. Trust. Winning in the digital economy. Ten years ago, the tech companies rolled into Cannes and put their expensive tents up on the beach in search of advertising dollars. Instagram didn’t exist. TikTok meant something a clock does. Obama’s Hope campaign was the Titanium and Integrated Grand Prix winner. Then the ad tech investors brought their yachts, superseded by the Martech companies through the inevitable consolidation. Now Amazon buys what’s left of Sizmek and boom – we have a new megatech player providing advertising tech to contend with.
If I were a client at Cannes I’d be talking about these moves, based on new consumer habits, and what that will mean for my advertising ecosystem.
A major topic for my marketing colleagues will be how to balance my global organisation’s need for operational capacity and scale with finding the right creative skills for the next ten years. I adore the phrase ‘systems and empathy’ in this context. Coined by the journalist Charles Arthur to describe how cities, in order to grow sustainably, need large systems like public transport to cope with expanding populations and empathetic environments like farmers’ markets to acknowledge diversity.
It’s a great way to think about how to succeed at global advertising content and production. Clients need a smart mix of platforms and intelligence to scale, to automate where possible, with explicit technology strengths to create a thousand assets efficiently in forty languages. But without empathy, a belief in creativity and the transformative power of a great idea, brands end up processing without purpose.
The good news is that clients will be talking about how creativity is more important than ever. But its expression will change according to the demands of their content strategies. Intelligence about insight, how we use data to inform and improve the way people can hear about or buy their brands is a hot topic. I’m particularly looking forward to the new Creative Strategy Lion category, as it tests the link between business strategy and brand idea.
The industry always wants to know how the Cannes Lions machine adds value. It’s still a massive networking event, per se. We do know for sure that creative work will continue to be judged on empathy, on how it makes us feel. Clients will be judged by how well they crack the systems that deliver performance. Those that get the balance between creativity and performance right just might be back next year!
