As we returned home last week after several days of meetings, conferences and awards at Lions, we wondered where to start when we would relate our time in Cannes.
There’s so much to talk about! We obviously had a great time at Lions. Moments spent discussing freely with partners, clients, providers and platforms offer a rare concoction of insights, knowledge and shared impressions.
This year, we noted there was more diversity in attendants’ and venues in terms of countries and regions of origin, as well as a strong conversation around inclusiveness in the industry. We hope it will continue this way and feel enthusiastic about this discussion as a company that prides itself on its own diversity and continues to work on enhancing it. And we were lucky enough to meet bold creative, media and digital counterparts from all over the world including newer participant countries such as Uzbekistan. It’s amazing how much this enhances the experience and our own perception. We felt humbled by the work and audacity of the teams we met.
Sustainability was also a key discussion which allowed for us to test and strengthen our own lower impact ads methodology. This is clearly becoming a strong trend in Lions Awards, particularly in creative. How we tie this together across the value chain and with the actual content, purpose, and product (or service), is what we now have to work on as an industry.
In challenging economic times, we were able to discuss the notion of “frugal” marketing, focusing on performance in high-attention media, which is something we felt we’d always been comfortable with, since we had never turned away from performance anyway. We just don’t see how you differentiate a performance focus and a branding focus. The truth is, branding must meet KPIs and KPIs should support the brand. And no matter how uncertain the context, reaching out to your customers, clients and stakeholders is as important as ever.
On the platform side, there’s increasing sophistication in tech solutions, reach and formats. Yet much as we love to have those geeky conversations and new offerings, the central goals as far as we see them remain:
– Results!
– Value for our clients.
We raised key questions with some B2B platforms such as how to make sure our clients get the best deal on the inventory they need to invest in, what are the best solutions for their data and CRM, or how to ensure quality over all. We squarely spoke about CPMs, how to improve them, and audiences, as well as concrete issues such as combing campaigns with CRM Data, reaching those people who just aren’t online that much with the most efficient ads, or user experience.
Speaking of B2B, this was also a great opportunity to reach out to some of our partners and attend specific moments on B2B marketing! We loved it, as well as the exposure to our partners within that specific environment of passionate professionals. Just as on the creative side, B2B is now a real “thing” in Cannes, on the media side, the community is strengthening its ties to bring even better know-how to marketers. We feel nothing but excitement.
Finally, creative creative creative… Cannes is always a total mindblower in terms of human inventivness. We saw incredible projects, venues and dedicated events teams that do an amazing job. And so to finish off, we’d like to express our recognition and gratitude to the agencies, organizers and partners who made this happen and look forward to experiencing the same and more in ’24.
Until then, keep up the good work and rosé!
