AB InBev, David Droga, Nick Law, Sir Martin: Cannes Explodes On Day One

There’s nothing worse than not being at a party and hearing how great it is, so I will try and spare you the FOMO and get to the talking points you can share to pretend you were here.

In its 70th year, Cannes Lions kicked off with AB InBev’s Marcel Marcondes wooing the audience with his Brazilian dulcet tones as he walked through the strategy his 500ish-year old company took to make it the most effective and creative marketing team for the past two years running by pretty much any measure you wish to apply.

Also up on Day one, was David Droga, CEO of Accenture Song, who lamented giving up his Creative Chairman position to Nick Law as well as the stage. Before exiting, Droga did emphasise that technology was creativity and he saw its embrace as a key component for his and any other company’s success.

Nick Law, who is alongside Droga as one of Australia’s most successful creative exports spoke much as he has in the past about agencies and marketers needing a new grammar. By this he means learning to come to terms with new tools to express creativity and bridge the gap between technical expertise and creative realisation.

To illustrate his point, as he has done so before, Law pointed to the fact that photographers once upon a time essentially needed to be chemists, In other words, they needed to be skilled technicians to achieve the medium, rather than being people whom appreciated the new boundaries of exploration the new medium had to offer.

Speaking with Droga and Law was Accenture Song’s Global Data and AI Lead Lan Guan. Guan told her story of growing up in China and being one of the few who was able to study AI from an early age. She spoke to the evolution of the technology from something practised by weirdos in lab coats to being a mainstream awakening.

To illustrate the power of generative AI, Lan showed a conversation she had GPT produce between her younger self and her present-day person. To do so, she uploaded years of her personal diaries and then asked the AI engine to interpret what that conversation might look like. (Apologies for the crappy photography.)

Sir Martin Sorrell, in another morning session, offered perhaps a bleaker view of where technology was going. Looking frailer than any of us would like, Sir Martin was as quick as ever and he started his talk in saying that the world was a crazy place. Focusing on the war in Ukraine, the “cold war” between the US and China and the decline in Europe, Sir Martin framed his clients’ appreciation of AI as one with which they would look to cut costs and move to an in-housing model.

While acknowledging there was massive upside in AI, in the short-term it would cause a lot of agencies pain. “Those of you in this room will be fine, but those not here will find themselves in a tricky spot,” he said.

He was referring to the need for agility above all as a key skill, while singling out media planner buyers and almost certainly headed for the scrap heap. “The big holding companies employ some 300-400 thousand people in media planning and buying, that need will no longer be there shortly.”

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