Cannes Lions is looming and there are really two questions: one is it an advertising event any more (Saatchi’s New Directors showcase – now New Creators – once one of the highlights, has now abandoned it for the lesser delights of SXSW in London) while the big money and big shows on the beach will come from tech companies and their handmaidens the tech-powered intermediaries like SSPs and DSPs.
There won’t even be a Creative Company of the Year as that would most certainly go to Omnicom as, after its takeover of IPG, it now accounts for about half the entire market. It won’t have been lost on the organisers that last year’s winner WPP was in the throes of an accelerating car crash and Network of the Year DDB was so vital to owner Omnicom that it was abruptly retired after the IPG merger. Although bits live on, rather pathetically, in the Bernbach mini-network, named after You-Know-Who. Doubt that Bill, if he were still us, would be heading for La Croisette.
Two, will the creative, whichever slot it finds, actually be any good? Unfortunately, for the cheerleaders of online, while such ads may be taking over the world commercially (around 70% of the global ad market) most of them are crap, direct marketing masquerading as advertising. Clients buy these because they attract so-called “eyeballs” and they’re cheap. The fact that many of the eyeballs are bots doesn’t seem to worry aforementioned clients as they’re still cheap. Which tells you a lot about the dire state of the business.
There’ve been the usual predictions of likely winners (including here) but not many have been truly outstanding. Ads that quicken the pulses (or even raise a wry smile) are nearly always destined for legacy media and these days there’s less of it. The talent pool to create these things is therefore getting smaller. Usually at Cannes time the heads of the holding companies front up somewhere to swear – swear they really mean it – that creativity is still important, in fact the heart of what they do. Doubt that anyone believes this tosh any more. Have John Wren (the new $70m man) or Arthur Sadoun or former WPP boss Martin Sorrell (who’s pontificated about just about everything else) ever said what their favourite ad is? A bit of a giveaway surely.
Adland these days is a tech arms race, one the holding companies are almost certain to lose to – tech.
Can this year’s Cannes Lions confound these gloomy thoughts? Let’s hope so (fingers and everything else well and truly crossed.)
Sadly, I agree with pretty much all of this.