What happens in Cannes… shouldn’t stay in Cannes

Coming home after another amazing week at the Cannes Lions International festival of creativity, I feel just like every year: tired of all the late nights, but reinvigorated and inspired by the work, the people and the discussions I was exposed to during the week. It is impossible to leave the festival as if it were just another conference. This one is mind blowing and here’s why.

1. This is the best place in the world to see how the boundaries of commercially purposed creativity are virtually inexistent.
2. If you are in the ad world, this is the best place to network and share thoughts and ideas with friends, colleagues, heroes and all sorts of inspiration figures.
3. You can win awards and get recognition that can even lead to finding a new and better paid job.

But let’s reflect for a minute or two upon the latter: winning awards. I just think winning Lions is not enough. Winning a Cannes Lion is fantastic, not only for the team that gets it but also for us as spectators as it points us to great work and helps steer amazing conversations among fans and critics. Did it deserve a gold? was a silver too much? Was it the client’s idea or the agency’s? Did the agency fund it? This conversation has been business as usual in Cannes until two things happen this year. First: Publicis, the major multinational French ad network and one of the top three in the world announced, in the middle of the week, that they are dropping out of Cannes next year. And second, we began to think about the role of awards and realized its relevance is limited to our industry. In other words, outside of our little world, a Lion is just a beautiful animal in the jungle, and like focusing on the bush sometimes doesn’t let us see the forest, in this case focusing on the lion is limiting our ability to see the jungle of opportunities there are outside for creativity. The conversation last week turned to whether or not it was OK for Publicis to do such a thing. And I think we missed a huge point.

I’ve attended the festival 12 times and I’ve seen it grow into a larger, more comprehensive showroom for creativity year after year. A lot of things have changed in communication, in the world and also in my career during this time. After 18 years in the ad world, I’ve spent the past two years working with startups as the Chief Growth Hacker at a global Company Builder called Rokk3r Labs, where I am also the CEO of one of our portfolio companies. Headquartered in Miami and with offices in Bogotá, Mexico, New York, Toronto, London and Guayaquil. Rokk3r Labs has a global portfolio of over 40 ventures and recently launched its first venture capital fund. This latest experience gives me a new perspective.

So what do I think, now that I am sort of an outsider who pretty much likes all the networks, agencies and people in the industry alike just as long as they bring good ideas to Cannes? Why do I think winning lions isn’t enough? Well, without the pressure of winning and showing off, I have been able to see the festival from a less biased point of view and three things have become even more evident to me. First, the role of advertising has never had greater responsibility with society. Second, as much as we talk about how the world has changed, the industry hasn’t fully realized how much and how fast it will continue to change in the next few years. And third, not enough has been done to use the power of our creative talent to embrace the opportunities presented by the imminent transformation of our world.

In the midst of all this, it seems to me that the moment isn’t right to be focusing so much on ranking everyone in the industry. The question shouldn’t be if agencies should maintain their presence in Cannes Lions or any other awards show. Focusing on that and citing young creatives’ future as the main reason why this should continue, sounds to me as discouraging as Publicis’ poorly managed and badly timed announcement from last week. The conversation should be about how we can continue to honor great work and the creators of amazing ideas while figuring out as an industry a way in which the transcendence of ideas is a part of how we measure and rank talent.

Ideas can transcend in many ways. They can become new companies or they can just keep making an impact in society in their original form. Will we let “Fearless Girl” be removed from Wall Street now that we all had our Lion and our show? How are we going to empower young creatives to develop products so innovative as Google’s Tilt Brush and not only win a Lion but also create a new industry player? Are we as an industry going to listen to David Droga’s advice to his children? He said: “Caring is the only thing that really matters”, so if it is, why not really care? How are we going to put that caring into action? Platon, the amazing photographer brought to the festival by TBWA also urged us to “invigorate moral compass in our society”. I think it is immoral to have the power to change the world and stop at winning the Lion.

Richard Curtis said in his acceptance speech: “Tell your clients you are in a unique position to change the world with their help”. I think he’s right. We really are all in a unique position to change the world. And that is what I would tell agencies, clients and the festival: let’s by all means keep celebrating creative ideas with Lions. But let’s work together to make Cannes Lions a platform where we make sure those awarded ideas transcend beyond the festival and beyond the advertising industry. Let’s embrace the power to change our industry, all industries, the world. Let’s provide funding and set up a teams to continue building upon those ideas. A Lion can help an idea become famous, but lets please go beyond that because what happens in Cannes, shouldn’t stay in Cannes.