Cannes Bloggers: Can Creativity Change The World?

B&T’s Young Lions may have partied hard at Cannes’ closing over the weekend but that hasn’t stopped Charlotte Berry and Grace Espinoza filing this diary piece from Friday’s sessions…

Can Creativity Change The World? YES.

We already knew this, but hearing Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of International Monetary Fund and Maurice Levy, Chairman of the Supervisory Board discuss at length the role of creativity in unlikely professions reinforced its power.

Charlotte Berry and Grace Espinoza (2017 Cannes Lions)

Christine is the definition of an incredible woman, a french lawyer, formerly the Global Strategic Committee for Baker-McKinsey, France’s Finance Minister and now managing director of the IMF. Despite leading up industries not often associated with being typically “creative”, Levy introduced Lagarde as one of the most creative minds he has come across. To be that successful, you have to be. As Bernbach famously stated, creativity is the last form of competitive advantage after all.

Christine believes that creativity lives differently in various professions – creativity needs to be redefined. And her definition is the ability to transgress to propose an alternative to complete chaos, a formula she applies to all her clients problems. Creativity means taking risks!

That’s it – creativity is the way or angle in which you solve problems, regardless of your field of profession. Being creative is beneficial to every facet of every business. Creativity means taking risks – and that is where real success lies.

The other word that came up several times, was trust. Trust in yourself, trust in your company and trust in your colleagues. We need to surround ourselves with the people and structures to grow. This resonated deeply with us, coming to Cannes together after working for 3 years we rely on each other and respect our different ways of thinking (and problem solving). The global UM network has been incredibly supportive, it’s touching. Despite only meeting members of the global team this week, we feel totally embraced.

Lagarde went on to champion the power of women. “Let women shine, do not repress them,” she urged the audience.

Her top tips:

Gender equality is the affair of both men and women. Men have to enforce the project (and a big, mutually beneficial project it is)
At a macro, societal level there is still legal discrimination against women – this is changing, but it needs to change quicker
Even if you are not convinced because you have bias, just look at the bottom line – when you bring women to the table you get better results and outputs
Gender equality needs to be measured from the ground up. Not just 46% of women work in the advertising work force but the percentage of women in management roles, executive roles, CEO roles. Have targets at the top.

Hearing and seeing these types of women this week has inspired us to keep the industry in check and apply a creative lens to every problem we come across – as Beyonce says, we run the world!

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Cannes Young Lions Charlotte Berry Designworks Grace Espinoza