What I Heard at Cannes This Week...

Babs Rangaiah

Published Jun 27, 2022

I attended the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, 2022, this week with Brand Innovators and through a combination of their inspiring sessions, big events and some coffees, dinners, and drinks with old colleagues, I had a chance to discuss the pressing marketing issues of the day with dozens of CMO’s. Here are 10 takeaways from the week on key themes in marketing from just a few of those CMO’s:

Molsen Coors on DEI: "Given that part of our marketing vision is to Proverbially “invite more people to the bar” beyond the frat-boy archetypes that are most often associated with beer, I’m incredibly proud that we have a diverse marketing leadership team with over 50% women and people of color. This has resulted in work that reflects a broader set of consumers with authentic insights and all of a sudden we're seeing women on twitter talking positively about our brands. This insight was a catalyst to for us to “make room at the bar” for others:-)” ~ Michelle St. Jacques, CMO Molson Coors

My key takeaway: Diversity isn’t just about doing the right thing for society. It makes for a strong business case as well. Having a more diverse team, leads to marketing that better reflects the consumer base which leads to new discoveries and innovation that can improve the bottom line.

Diageo on Web 3 – The Creator Economy: “The greatest gift we have is to be able to express ourselves …and what web 3 will do, is allow people to do that and get compensated for it appropriately versus what they could in other platforms to date, where the platforms made all the money” ~ Sophie Kelly, SVP NA Whiskey Portfolio, Diageo

My key takeaway: Content will be democratized, and creators will be paid for their work (unlike today where influencers, musicians, artists, writers, etc. mostly don’t get monetarily rewarded) and the more your content is liked, shared, etc. the more you’ll get paid. The way it should be!

Activision on Web. 3 - The Metaverse: “Gaming is bigger than film, music and tv combined. And it’s not just kids. For example, Candy Crush is older & female, etc. And it’s the entry point/model for the metaverse. So, brands can use it as a model. The key learning for brands in gaming is that 1) you need to add value to the experience. You can’t just slap a logo on a game. You need to join in a way that’s additive to the game. (i.e., allow them to buy skins, etc.) 2) Treat your customers like fans. Find out what inspires them, what excites them, what moves, them etc.… 3) Consider how all that will apply to the metaverse. Don’t just translate exactly from gaming or current approaches. You need to customize, recognizing the additional benefits that the metaverse will bring.” ~ Fernando Machado, CMO Activision

My key takeaway: To some extent the XR part of the metaverse is already at scale with gaming. Look at gaming as a model to prepare for the metaverse and then reframe for the new technologies. Don’t just copy exactly what you did in the past. New technologies offer great opportunities, but you must customize for them accordingly.

The NY Times on Digital Transformation: Companies tend to hold on and protect the way they’ve always done things. But if you really want to transform you can’t do it half-heartedly. We made a decision to focus on the subscription business model and it’s paid off. ~ David Rubin, CMO The NY Times

My key takeaway: To truly fend off disruption and transform for the new age, you’ll need to make some bold choices and be prepared to sacrifice and potentially take some financial hits in the short term.

The NFL on Cause Marketing: “A few years ago, everything just turned, and I think we, like a lot of companies reflected on how we had been doing things. We’ve shifted our strategy to put players at the center of everything we do. We want them to have their voice heard and we want to be more compassionate and relatable to our younger fans and families. Today cause marketing is a part of our strategy. Yes, we talk about the joy and the excitement around the game, but we also give players an opportunity to talk about the things that were personal to them…in many cases deeply personal. So, it’s become half of everything that we do” ~ Tim Ellis, CMO NFL

My key takeaway: Have a double bottom line goal; Your key business metric AND ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) Goals.

Indeed On Jobs/Work: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. We're going to help 100 million people get jobs by 2030. Many of those will be people facing barriers due to legal/criminal issues. Some for things as minor as unpaid parking tickets. We will be launching a campaign next month to help expunge the non-violent records of some of them. - Indeed Team

My key takeaway: For all the talk about the “great resignation”, there are many untapped markets out there for us to find great talent. We need to reframe our thinking beyond just hiring based on our historical criteria.

Hulu on Creativity in a Streaming World vs Linear: “We’re not going to start with “this is an idea for linear”. We create a great piece of content and then figure it out where it will best live. You can’t marry yourself to the idea that you’re creating something for one channel. You start with, what is the story you want to tell, what is the best way to tell it, and what is the best way to find an audience” ~ Scott Donaton, CMO Hulu

My key takeaway: It’s not about linear or streaming. People are going to consume content in all different forms. You need to be able to tell a great story and then customize it for distribution in all the channels that apply and personalize it using addressable technologies.

Data/Measurement: “We’ve just come out of the upfronts with many people predicting that 20 - 40% of the deals would not include Nielsen in this cycle. The Networks talked a lot about using more of the new technology providers, leveraging new methodologies and agencies talked about outcome-based guarantees, etc. but in the end it turns out that the deal number was closer to zero. Literally almost no deals were done outside Nielsen, and I guess the real question is why?” ~ Samba/Havas Interview

My key takeaway: Nielsen’s been around for 70 years and have owned their data. They’ve actually paid people to journal what they watched and put meters in their own homes so their viewing behaviours can be observed, and they then extrapolated and projected that to a national audience. It’s difficult to replicate at that scale. There are incredible innovations happening with things like ACR data and new technologies that capture real first party data, so there will be changes, but it will take some time.

The Coming Recession: Everybody believes it’s going to a very tough remainder of 2022 and 2023. I would actually say 2024 as well. I don't think we'll get significant economic change until the American presidential election in 2024. ~ Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman, S4 Capital

My key takeaway: doh!

Career: The Key Traits for Success: You need to enjoy what you’re doing, have a positive attitude and have fun! You don’t want to be the person that walks into a room and sucks out all the energy. Miserable people deliver miserable results. ~ Keith Weed, ex CMO Unilever, President Advertising Association, President Royal Horticultural Society