Cannes Lions – data, creativity, tech and innovation

It feels like every time I head to the iridescent French Riviera town of Cannes for Cannes Lions - the aptly named ‘festival of creativity’ -  the event morphs year after year to mirror the evolving needs of the industry.

No more the reserve of the ‘creatives’, it is now a bouillabaisse stew of marketers, tech companies, media, agencies and not forgetting the evangelists of the ‘future-of-marketing’ – all meeting and strategizing on how to best blast their marketing message through the dense fog of media saturation.

In recognition of the fact that marketers are now under pressure to innovate, utilise data and technology whilst creating emotive experiences for consumers, Cannes Lions launched the ‘Innovation’ conference and awards last year – a two day conference and showcase that returned for its second annual event on the 21 & 22 June this year.

I caught up with Rob Dembitz, Corporate Development Director at Cannes Lions to find out more about innovation.

He said “Lions Innovation showcases how data and technology can be used to enhance and enable Creativity. The content programme has been designed not only to inspire but give marketers tools and an improved understanding that will help them do their jobs better on their first day back in the office.”

The Innovation conference culminated in a set of awards which included the ‘Creative Data’ category where we saw ‘The Next Rembrandt’ pick up a grand prix award for the Microsoft machine learning AI who created an entirely new painting by the infamous painter.

In addition to Cannes Innovation I immersed myself in ‘fringe’ events including YouTube’s ‘Adventures in VR session’ and WARC’s panel featuring Samsung’s Marc Mathieu on ‘Marketing in an Era of Personalisation’.

See the full download below.

Overheard in Cannes…

 
We love media and creative types, especially the ones pacing up and down the Croisette. Here’s a tongue-in-cheek whip-round of soundbites that made us chuckle:

‘I was brainstorming with myself last night for hours and came to conclusion that I was right all along’
“My hairstyle just isn’t compatible with a VR headset”
“I am sooo over rose’”
“Get Versace to get the suit bag on the plane, honey”