Megayachts carrying the titans of the media and advertising worlds have dropped an anchor in the Mediterranean Sea this week to grapple with the industry’s biggest issues over copious bottles of chilled rosé.
This week, at the alcohol-infused five-day gathering known as the 66th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the brightest minds in the advertising, performing arts, media, tech and corporate marketing worlds, will mull over how to get their content in front of consumers who are increasingly watching in a different way.
Headline speakers at the five-day fest, which starts on Monday, include Jeffrey Katzenberg, Shonda Rhimes, Jeff Goldblum, Kerry Washington, Gayle King, Laura Dern, Chrissy Teigen, Sheryl Sandberg and Lorne Michaels.
After a year fraught with massive media mergers by the likes of AT&T’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner and Disney’s $71.3 billion purchase of 21st Century Fox, not to mention the uptick in spending on content from streaming companies looking to compete with Netflix, media types are rethinking how to best reach consumers.
“The biggest story is everybody grasping and grappling with the need to change the model to be direct-to-consumer,” said founder, chairman and chief executive of MediaLink Michael Kassan, who is also the unofficial mayor, master of ceremonies and grand poohbah of Cannes Lions.
This year alone, AT&T, Disney, Apple and Quibi, a streaming service co-founded by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Hewlett Packard boss Meg Whitman, are spending billions in original content to keep pace with Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.
Millennials are cutting the cord at a fast clip, and opting to pay for streaming services over traditional cable. The race translates to a moment-defining challenge for marketing execs on how to capture the attention of cord-cutters by using data-driven content to lure them as subscribers.
Advertising agencies are also getting into the mix and investing in data in a major way through acquisitions. In April, Publicis nabbed data digital marketing firm Epsilon for $4.4 billion, one of the biggest acquisitions in the ad world has ever seen, according to Kassan.
Although it may be hard to focus on some of the issues the morning after the liver-withering array of Cannes Lions yacht and beach parties, delegates will also take in presentations and discussions from the biggest names in the business.
Katzenberg will introduce Quibi, a short/-form video platform, to the ad community. The former Dreamworks boss will be on site to receive Cannes Lions prestigious Media Person of the Year award, is rumored to be announcing “massive” ad partners to launch the service next April.
The Hollywood mogul joins an eclectic mix of bold-face speakers also including Wyclef Jean, John Legend, Marie Kondo and Dwayne Wade. “Saturday Night Live” creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, and ex-WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell will close out the week with Friday sessions.
Michaels, who rarely does interviews, will be in town to collect the inaugural “Entertainment Person of the Year Award,” and speak about storytelling and how to connect with audiences.
Another attention-grabbing guest this year is Sorrell, the pompous, high-flying ad man, who was the talk of Cannes Lions last year, after he resigned from WPP amid sexual misconduct claims and allegations that he led a culture of bullying at the firm.
At the time, the sanctimonious exec, who “strenuously denied” that he took company funds for a prostitute, used the Cannes Lions mainstage to introduce his new company S4Capital, whilst dodging sharp questions from journalist Ken Auletta. The Cannes Lions organizers stuck Sorrell at the end of the week, on Friday, which is the exact same placement he gets again this year.
However Sorrell will this time be the one throwing questions at Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell, who will discuss the popularity of the libertine festival that takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert in late August.
And yet again the Croisette, Cannes’s seaside boardwalk, is hosting a dizzying crush of white pop-up tents from consultancies, marketing firms and media brands.
According to a Cannes Lions rep, the number of brands participating in the content portion of the festival, which includes panels, beach takeovers and events, increased to 102 this year from 85 in 2018 and 57 in 2017.
This comes after Publicis sat out the festival last year, and many similarly situated ad agencies and media companies pulled back spending. Vice Media, which is in the process of a rehaul, has cut its annual wild Thursday night party at Cannes appropriately-seedy casino.
However, there is a renewed mix of companies taking part. This year, Cannes won’t just be dominated by tech giants Facebook, Google, Twitter and Pinterest, but there’s also a healthy mix of media companies like NBCUniversal, which is upping its presence at the festival.
“This is the first year that there’s an inflection point for the likes of NBC, ABC/Disney and Fox. The traditional broadcasters companies are realizing it’s important to be here,” Kassan said. “I’ve not heard anyone say I’m not going to Cannes because I don’t need to. If you want to be in the conversation, you’ve got to be in the room.”