15 | In Cannes with Creators

Note: Breaking format slightly as I went to Cannes for a few days this week during the annual Lions Festival with friend-of-the-letter Damian Bradfield.

There’s a touch of sadness among the veterans here that wafts in and out of the conversations along the Croisette cabanas, inside the price-gouging restaurants, and through villa gardens framed in Bougainvillea.

Cannes Lions, they say, it used to be about creativity. This is where ad agencies reigned, celebrating big campaign wins with big brand clients only too happy to relocate to the south of France for the week to bask in some of that glow.

I sit on a bar stool on the lazily named Google Beach chatting with friend-of-the-letter Dan Germain, and he mentions to a passer-by that he checked out the Lions competition entries hanging in the Palais earlier in the day. “Thank you for doing that,” she says, and means it.

This year it’s about AI and ad tech, or tech in general. The talk is of products and tools in panels long on titles and short on depth. And the talk is of attention. So much about attention.

The 70-year-old advertising festival overloads its programming. Who gets your precious attention? Who doesn’t?

March quickly through the rain and sun on slippery sidewalks, badges flouncing against wrinkled linen and sundresses. Everything is seemingly 20 minutes away by foot. Can you make the live podcast recording at the publisher’s villa? What about the creator economy talk back down on the beach? No, not THAT side of the beach, the other side … about 20 minutes away.

On a yacht that feels like a Chevy Camaro in the harbor, hustle lord Gary Vaynerchuck holds back-to-backs. Potential clients for his business get spots on his podcast. Hesitant ones don’t. All get his book, bearing the panic-inducing title “Day Trading Attention”.

Then there are the debutantes, and all the attention they command. Once influencers, now creators, getting talked up by the Cannes Lions president before their arrival, and feted by TikTok at the 100+ year old Carlton Hotel.

They are the new brand darlings, their audiences lapped up by marketers keen to insert products and strap lines into their content. And so here they emerge, blinking into the glossy glow and $1 million beachfront activations of the tech brands that facilitate their hustle, and the big-name brands that help finance it. But they’re not suckers.

“We’re your billboards,” says Adrian Per (@omgadrian) on a small stage in the beachside cabana hosted by the creator group Whalar, “but respect us.”

Negotiating that mutual respect is what Whalar specializes in. The company was formed to connect brands to all this new social talent. They step in as talent management, as well, with a physical space and incubator in the offing. Their space this week hosted a well curated lineup of brand and platform execs and creator talent, many talking about evolution.

From mere shilling, the tactics have moved on. Creators want a seat at the table: influence in social and creative strategy, messaging, and look and feel. Indeed, this is the latent tension in the relationship: balancing an existing brand personality with the unique POV and cost-efficient audience building strategy of commissioning a creator.

It made me wonder where the tenant of brand voice was headed. Those guidelines we crafted at Red Bull and Apple were almost sacrosanct, and we expected collaborators to stick to the script. Now they’ve become ever more malleable, suggested bullet points in a brief that’s more of a co-production than a traditional spot. They’re part of campaigns that create if not superior reach, then superior engagement.

At the NFL, my former colleague and SVP of Content Ian Trombetta (not yet a subscriber) provides the creators they work with a long leash: a player’s own intellectual property, even a team’s, is given over for creators to interpret fluently. The control, of course, comes in the access the NFL provides, and presumably shuts off, should creators get too far off script.

The benefit is clear though. America’s most powerful sports league already commands the attention of the tens of millions who follow the sport or their teams. Who the NFL wants now is the younger, more casual fan. It just so happens those fans get excited around the storytelling moments the NFL wants to push the most: in the off-season, when weekly games aren’t dominating the storyline.

The reins are loosened. Measureable audience and engagement is paramount. Creators take the wheel.

But as the relationships firm up and get some longevity, do their unique audiences stick around? Some brands are getting ahead of that question.

I wrote a few weeks ago about Oli Pop bringing on TikTok creator Sara Crane to run (and star in) their social strategy. This week, after a 3-month search, John Deere announced the hiring of TikTok creator Rex Curtiss as its Chief Tractor Officer (a title that truly befuddles), on a year-long contract to elevate the company’s unsung narratives. He seems like a really nice and talented guy, by the way, and crafts amazing things with the wax from cheese wheels. Here’s his winning application.

Perhaps this makes the most sense for big brands that have defined personalities, and were built over the long term. Or those that aspire to be around in 10, 15, 20 years time.

But it is interesting, isn’t it … we’re used to having healthy strategic debates and what feels most authentic to the brands that we run and tell stories around. Those were grounded in precedent, and rooted in the carefully aligned decks that provided a source of truth of sorts.

But like so much of the AI talk Cannes this week, this new Creator era is without precedent: a personality commanding an audience of hundreds of thousands, even millions. at a table tipping the balance between art and science, short-term conversions and long-term equity.