Cannes Lions CMO on Community, Advocacy & What Actually Moves Revenue

So you've been there now for six years, right? First, initially as VP of marketing and now as a CMO.

How has it changed on that watch? And particularly really interesting to understand, what changes didn't you see coming?

It's changed incredibly fast and substantially, right? So Cannes Lions has always been recognized and known for the place where you go to celebrate great creativity and the benchmark really for creative excellence when it comes to marketing and business.

Obviously it is still there, but more and more it's become a platform to discuss, debate, learn how you can use creativity and creative excellence and creative effectiveness as a lever for business growth.

So as a result of that, the festival expanding as to what it does, what the job is for the festival to do in the industry, What's changed also has been who creativity is relevant for.

So it used to be mainly creatives, media people, agencies, media platforms.

Again, still is for those players in the industry, but increasingly more it is for CMOs, CEOs, founders, creators.

People from all sorts of verticals, right? Sports is a big thing this year at the festival.

B2B marketers that, frankly, weren't bothered by CreosCVC in the past.

And now it is really important, high up on the B2B marketing agenda.

Tech companies, etc.

So...

That has been a massive change, right? So we're seeing a lot more CEOs, business leaders on sites.

We're seeing investors looking for new startups, new unicorns, right? Emerging in the industry.

And this wasn't the case, right? Before the pandemic, I have to say.

And the biggest change I didn't see coming, I'd say, the fast rise of creators as a big part of the marketing ecosystem, right? We all know they're incredibly powerful.

The creator economy is growing super fast.

But really, how important they are in all of the conversations at the festival, airing the industry, that is a big change and a big shift I've seen.

And we have... uh echo lines alliance creators which is a dedicated program just for them uh and this year is bigger and better let's say

yeah i read a stat the other day is it's almost three quarters of agency creative briefs include a creator element to it over the past six months which is which is like wild which is so fascinating and and you know from my vantage point, sometimes done fantastically well.

Mostly done badly.

And by the way that that should be leveraging how they can work with this sort of decentralized creativity that creators bring to the party.

So fascinated to see how that's going to be on the agenda this year, because it certainly has shifted from the macro Alex Earls of the world to this more micro community led approach.

And how does that tie into the agency landscape? How does that tie into the creativity landscape of the briefs in there? So I think it will be a hot topic.

From your perspective, as someone who's been, I mean, you were brand side first, right? And then sort of on the supplier side as well, like, from your vantage point, like, What is it that you're learning about how marketing is going? So we're sort of talking about where we are today.