After our session in Paris, we arrived at the Cannes Advertising Festival. This year's festival focused on embracing the power of influence, promoting gender equality, driving growth through creativity, integrating media, and championing diversity. It emphasized the critical role of technology, especially artificial intelligence, and how it can be aligned and used in strategic operations. This blog discusses key themes and insights from the first two days of Cannes Lions.
Power of Influence and Possibilities
Many of the speakers began their talk by emphasizing the impact and influence on the individual. They emphasized that in a world where consumers are increasingly looking for authenticity, the impact of a brand is no longer a broad concept, but a different kind of impact that each consumer can have. At the same time, consumers who feel that their choices are respected tend to be more loyal. Thus, brand and consumer respect and loyalty are a mutual relationship. Based on this relationship, sticking to one's brand values and DNA is very important. With a large number of brands competing for consumers' attention, those that remain consistent and true to their core values will ultimately stand out. For example, Estee Lauder, when sharing its choice of Amanda Gorman as Global Changemaker, mentioned that the reason for choosing a spokesperson is to showcase the brand's core values and DNA, and that this consistency also showed in all brand activities.
Gender equality
Gender equality, with a particular focus on women's empowerment, was another focus of the festival. At the event I participated in, women from a variety of industries shared their experiences and visions of what gender equality could look like in the future. At the same time, there were many stories that celebrated the unique experiences and perspectives of women, which brought valuable diversity to brand storytelling. So women are not just consumers, but creators, influencers, and leaders who shape brand stories. There are also many examples of award-winning work that emphasize the liberation and empowerment of women, such as Dirty Laundry, which won the Entertainment Lions Gold Award and aims to empower women to get their clothes out in the sun. Using such a small thing to amplify the theme and emphasize gender equality. The ability of advertising and marketing to bring some unseen people into the sunlight is in itself a thing that transcends any commercial value.
All about AI
On these two days, AI was the question and word that came up most often in almost all the settings, both when the speakers were talking about the content and when the participants were asking questions. Most of the speakers from different industries emphasized the integration of AI with various strategic operations in the future. At the Microsoft sharing session, it was emphasized that AI is no longer a future development, but a technology that marketers need to face now. Microsoft showcased hundreds of creators at the event who used Generative AI Bing Image Creator to conceive a fantastic sea creature inspired by an octopus, a starfish, or a nudibranch. The creations were so interesting that it made me wonder if perhaps the advent of artificial intelligence could urge humans to imagine and explore more, rather than imprison them. As Havas shared, when Photoshop first appeared, people were afraid that it would take away the work of designers, and then it was still humans using technology. So maybe for AI now, being able to learn how to use it can also be used for people in the future.
My Creation
After watching this exhibition, I also used Bing Image Creator to create a random octopus.
The text I entered was: Create a thinking mechanical octopus, its style is the animation style of SpongeBob SquarePants, but has the same personality as Patrick. At the same time, this octopus is very annoying to eat cilantro.
I tried different content again but could see that the technology is not particularly mature, as well as some infringing content may not be displayed.
コメント