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Cannes 2023: Old-School basics. New-School tech.
The south of France served up a heady mix of sun, yachts and inspiring ideas at
this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Not surprisingly, AI was the topic on everyone’s lips this year. According to the Festival, it featured in more work than ever before – some of it award-winning, some of it not. It’s this disparity between the excellent and the less-than-excellent work on display that cuts to the heart of the discussion around AI.
AI is an incredible tool with a million different uses. It can make the impossible possible. It can be used to produce more ambitiously, educate more broadly and help more intuitively. But it is ultimately just a tool.
Ideas, human truths, real insights and (actually) good taste are the foundations for building meaningful connections with audiences. These qualities are the difference between delivering communications and delivering value. Along with this new frontier of technology, the other themes to permeate Cannes this year were somewhat familiar – if not slightly modernised.
There’s a deliberate and noticeable return to brand-building basics. The work that won and was most talked about delivered short-term results by building long-term brand equity. At a practical level, it’s about showing up in interesting places, selling your core benefit, and being more entertaining and charming to seize attention early in a cluttered media landscape.
Lastly, there was a large focus on authenticity. That’s not a euphemism for truth or holding up a mirror to society or yourself. Rather it’s about recognising how brands show up sincerely and
ransparently so that its intentions are clear, understood and accepted. It’s about community building with intimate, deep interactions that offer audiences a more robust brand experience.