Cannes Lions 2018Insight and inspiration from five days of talks on creativity in advertising

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A snapshot of Cannes Lions 2018

Transformation: It’s a thrill ride | GSK & MediaLink

Integrate for creative success | McKinsey

The mission to rebuild digital trust | Unilever

HP and P&G show gender equality is a force for growth | HP, P&G & Free the Bid

Battle of the briefs | Deloitte Digital

Emotional control for a connected world | Inition

Eliminating bias from AI

Creative impact for good | Google

Will AI kill off the roles of Creative, Art Director, Copywriter and Client? | Accenture Interactive

Technology’s potential to drive the creative process | Intel

Five minutes with… Katharine Viner, Editor in Chief of the Guardian

Creativity on the couch | PHD

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A snapshot of Cannes Lions 2018

Temperatures topped 30-degrees on the French Riviera for this year’s Cannes Lions in June. The hot topics at the annual advertising festival were mainly focused around creativity and diversity.

From hotel rooftops up and down the Croisette, to the sponsored beach hubs and main stages at the Palais des Congrès, debate and discussion centred around creativity’s ability to drive change, only when more inclusive and representative environments are established for both workplace and society.

HP’s support for ‘Free The Bid’ and increased diversity throughout the creative supply chain was backed by P&G.

The world’s biggest advertiser also announced partnerships to drive equal representation and positive portrayals of women in media, and is now working with the ANA’s #SeeHer movement, plus other industry initiatives, including the Unilever and UN Women-backed Unstereotype Alliance.

Unilever meanwhile built on its pledge not to invest in online platforms that create division, by announcing it will not work with influencers who buy followers either.

Elsewhere, discussions around AI shifted from its technological potential to the impact it will have on human creativity and how to ensure that gender, racial and ethnic bias doesn’t become part of its machine learning.

Google took to the Cannes Lions stage to showcase what happens when creativity drives humanitarianism, whereas Intel showed us technology’s potential to evolve the creative process.

This year, PHD Worldwide partnered with The School of Life and psychologist Oliver James to discuss human creativity and how to encourage the behaviours of a playful childhood to ultimately enhance workplace creativity, inclusion and innovation.

Our conjecture for sessions held on the Dubussy Theatre main stage and the Innovation stage at the Palais des Congrès, was that creativity’s ongoing evolution is experiencing a midlife crisis.

Creativity’s role within media is arguably being diluted by data and automation. As shifts in workplace culture and society-at-large have exposed a creative chasm, without the diversity of available talent with which to keep filling it.

With more and more brands now looking to their agencies to refocus back onto creativity in the face of technology automation, much of this year’s Cannes Lions was a wake-up call for diversity of thought, processes and most importantly, creative talent.

Moving forward, we will continue to explore these themes. For now, though, enjoy our Snapshot of those discussions and sessions that caught our attention on the Côte d’Azur.

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GSK’s Marc Speichert and Carlton Lawson opened Cannes Lions Health 2018 by revealing the secrets of the firm’s “year of transformation” to reorganise, discover new ways of working and implement new marketing strategies.

Healthcare giant GSK opened this year’s Cannes Lions Health with a frank discussion on how it has embraced marketing change and the details of its ongoing journey of digital transformation.

GSK Consumer Healthcare, Head of Global Categories, Carlton Lawson, began by explaining how the company has redefined its marketing to focus on ethics, empathy and brand purpose.

Horlicks, Sensodyne toothpaste and US migraine relief medicine, Excedrin were shown as examples of how GSK’s advertising creative has evolved from informational and testimonial-based to building brands that are ‘trusted for every life’.

“We moved our marketing from ‘I know you, I like you’ to ‘you know me, you trust me’,” Lawson told delegates. “However, since 2010 we’ve had an agenda to become more digital in order to underpin this shift, but we’ve struggled to change a culture where marketers were too afraid to admit that they didn’t know how to use digital marketing beyond banners and buttons. We had to create a safe internal environment where anyone could admit that they needed help and we recruited a Chief Digital Officer to integrate digital into all aspects of the business.”

That Chief Digital Officer was Marc Speichert, who immediately set about breaking down the silos within GSK and integrating digital working practices into everything from human resources to

Transformation: It’s a thrill ride

legal and finance.

“In the last 18 months, we’ve been redefining our relationships with partners such as Google,” Speichert says. “We are the first consumer healthcare company to sign a deal with Google that allows us to gain better consumer insights, which feed the innovation pipeline, and ultimately helps us to create more engaging, relevant content.”

The GSK Google deal enables the Pharma giant to own its search data. That in turn, allows GSK to have much more visibility and understand how consumers are behaving, how they react to certain messages, and how they search for GSK products.

“We can use these insights to get better at ethicalness, empathy and brand purpose,” Speichert says. “Content provides us with our highest return on investment, so being able to redefine what that content looks like by moving away from a TV mindset and underpinning our creative with digital insights, it allows us to be more innovative and build deeper levels of trust with the people who search for and buy our products.”

As Speichert admits however, the healthcare industry is not a static environment and is under constant threat of disruption from new players such as Amazon.

“That’s why the transformation thrill ride is non-stop,” Speichert concludes. “We are ripe for disruption and our next competitor may not even exist yet so we have to stay on this journey and keep transforming for an evolving world.”

‘Transformation is a Thrill Ride’, presented by GSK & MediaLink, took place on the Health Inspiration Stage, Palais II on Monday, 18th June.

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CMOs who integrate data with creativity have experienced a two-times growth in revenue, according to McKinsey’s latest research.

McKinsey has proven that merging data with creativity drives real business growth.

During a packed session at Cannes Lions 2018, McKinsey Senior Partner, Brian Gregg and Global Lead Digital Marketing, Jason Heller, revealed the findings of a study into 200 worldwide CMOs, which was carried out in association with the ANA trade body in the US.

McKinsey’s study, which also included 40 face-to-face interviews, found that those CMOs who integrate data with creativity have experienced a two-times growth in revenue, compared with those CMOs who consider their creative and data to be separated.

“We learned that it’s not enough to specialise in both data and creativity but keep them in silos. It’s the integration of these two capabilities that drives two times growth,” Heller said. “The recipe for success is to integrate, be agile and hire whole-brain talent.”

Out of the 200 companies studied, McKinsey found that they fell into three different categories - those that successful integrate analytics and creativity, those that isolate strong data and creativity, and the idlers - those that are still building up their creative or analytic know-how.

Integrators are 30% more likely to use data and analytics to track the customer journey, while 56% bring analytics and AI into the way they measure consumer insights.

Integrate for creative success

In a media landscape where clients are trying to better understand the most effective working models, McKinsey shows that working with enlarged portfolios of agencies has the benefit of increasing the whole-brained talent pool.

“Integrators have a clear idea of what whole-brained talent looks like and they are going after it in a variety of ways,” Gregg concluded. “Whether that’s outsourcing, in-housing or using more partner agencies, there’s a requirement to find those people that will keep these integrators

On the flip side, 62% of idlers say that there is almost no interaction between marketing and IT.

“Integrators use more sophisticated techniques for consumer insights”, Heller continued. “These are fed into the creative process and the creative teams are feasting on them. These are people that used to sit in different parts of the company. Now they sit together and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

McKinsey also discovered that integrators adopt agile marketing practices at twice the rate of isolators, and four times the rate of idlers.

“Agile marketing brings teams together. It creates autonomous, co-located teams who are laser-focused on a particular customer goal, and who can use content and analytics to implement more effective marketing decisions quicker,” Gregg told delegates. “It allows companies to do more faster and share the risks and reward.”

Creating agile marketing and data teams takes significant resources however. According to McKinsey, the integrators are recruiting new talent profiles who are interested in both the creative process and the predictive data models.

“One of the CMOs we spoke to told us that her data teams keep the creatives on their toes because of all the creative ideas that come from the data analysis,” Gregg continued. “The creative teams meanwhile ask more and more questions of the data scientists to see how far they can push the creative potential based on the available data. Unless you hire the right types of whole-brained talent, that workplace culture doesn’t just happen.”

agile in a rapidly evolving world.”

So what does the future hold for integrators? When CMOs start to use machine learning to better predict consumer behaviours or computer vision begins to unlock hidden insights, imagine what creativity that will unleash?

‘Redefining Creativity in the Data-driven Age’, presented by McKinsey, took place in the Debussy Theatre, Palais I on Monday, 18th June.

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Unilever is looking to build trust in its digital supply chain by refusing to work with influencers who buy followers or use bots.

Unilever’s CMO, Keith Weed has built on the company’s pledge, not to invest in online platforms that create division, by announcing at Cannes Lions 2018, it will not work with influencers who buy followers either.

In February 2018, Weed spoke at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, to demand that the industry start working together to improve transparency and rebuild consumer trust in an era of fake news and toxic online content.

During this IAB keynote, Unilever committed to never investing in platforms or environments that do not protect children or which create division in society, and promote anger or hate; to creating responsible content, initially tackling gender stereotypes in advertising through #Unstereotype, and championing this across the industry through the #Unstereotype Alliance; and to only partner with organisations, which are committed to creating better digital infrastructure, such as aligning around one measurement system and improving the consumer experience.

On the Cannes Lions stage this year, Weed went a step further, promising that, Unilever will not work with influencers who buy followers; Unilever brands will never buy followers; and that it will prioritise partners who increase transparency and help to eradicate bad practices throughout the whole ecosystem.

The mission to rebuild digital trust

Weed said: “Influencer marketing is great for brands, but with any new discipline that grows too quickly, there’s always dark arts that appear. Buying social followers is deceptive and having bots retweet and post comments is fraudulent. Unilever wants to ensure that its digital supply chain has the same responsibility to drive purposeful growth as those companies who supply the brands on our Sustainable Living plan.”

The 26 Sustainable Living Brands are currently growing 46% faster than other brands in the Unilever portfolio and deliver 70% of the company’s growth.

“Unilever was born with a purpose statement to ‘make cleanliness commonplace’ and it’s these types of purposeful ambitions that flow through the veins of our brands and their founding partners,” Weed continued. “When we acquire a new brand, we look to those with authentic meaningfulness so that we can align ourself with founding partners who have the same business philosophy as our founder, William Lever.”

‘Founders’ Formula: Pioneering for Purposeful Growth’, presented by Unilever, took place in the Lumiere Theatre, Palais I on Wednesday, 20th June, 2018.

Getty Images @ Cannes Lions 2018

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HP’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Antonio Lucio and P&G’s CMO Marc Pritchard outline their support, aims and ambitions for Free the Bid.

Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest advertiser, has teamed up with HP to add significant influence and fiscal support to the ‘Free The Bid’ campaign for gender equality in the creative pipeline.

P&G’s CMO Marc Pritchard, joined HP’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Antonio Lucio and Emma Reeves, Executive Director, Free The Bid, on the roof terrace of the Martinez Hotel at Cannes Lions 2018, to set out the campaign’s aims for the next few years.

“We have an aspiration,” Pritchard declared. “100% of all advertising and media is gender equal, accurately portraying both women and girls as gender equals. Some might say, ‘100% are you serious?’ I say, ‘why would it be any less?’”

According to the U.S. Association of National Advertisers (ANA) #SeeHer study, which launched in 2016 and analysed 40,000 campaigns, women and girls are inaccurately or negatively portrayed in 29% of adverts globally. A major contributor to this is the underrepresentation of women in key creative roles.

Only 33% of Chief Creative Officers, 32% of CMOs, 10% of Commercial Directors and 8% of Music Producers are women. These issues persist despite ANA evidence that gender-equal ads perform 10% higher in trust and 26% higher in

HP and P&G show gender equality is a force for growth

to admit that I didn’t know any female directors. Today, thanks to the Free The Bid database, 59% of our campaigns are directed by talented women.

“This is not about doing good for the sake of it. It’s about business results. We’ve grown our emotional brand attachment score by 33%, brand preference rating by 26% and seen a 33% rise in revenue per impression,” Lucio concluded.

Pritchard’s involvement with Free The Bid is part of a series of new actions, commitments and partnerships to increase diversity throughout the creative supply chain for P&G.

Recognising the importance of full industry participation, P&G is also working with the ANA’s #SeeHer movement, and other industry initiatives, including the Unilever and UN Women-backed Unstereotype Alliance.

During Cannes Lions 2018, P&G also announced partnerships to drive equal representation and positive portrayals of women in media, with Katie Couric Media and The Queen Collective, the production company run by Golden Globe and Emmy award-winner Queen Latifah.

“Gender equality is good for society and business,” Pritchard said. “Some of P&G’s best performing brands have the most gender-equal campaigns

sales growth.

In order to achieve 50:50 parity in the creative pipeline, Pritchard promised that P&G would help HP to fund the expansion of the Free The Bid campaign, so that it could employ more staff, upgrade its databases, and grow its representation from nine markets to 25 markets worldwide.

Founded by Alma Har’el in 2016, in response to her personal experience of the lack of opportunities for women directors in advertising, Free The Bid advocates taking a pledge that for every triple-bid commercial project there should be at least one women bidding for the work.

Free The Bid’s Reeves said: “85% of all consumer decisions are made by women so we need to help brands speak to them better. Our database currently has hundreds of female directors of all levels of experience, so there’s now no excuse not to consider a women director for the role.

“Nobody is saying hire a woman because she’s a woman - not even women want that. She just wants to be able to compete on a level playing field. She’s been kept out of the creative process for too long and we need to see her up on stage at Cannes Lions winning more awards.”

HP’s Lucio was an early supporter of Free The Bid. He said: “Over the past 18 months, we’ve grown our senior leadership team from 20% to 50% women. On the agency side, we went from zero women in senior creative roles to 52% globally. When I first spoke with Alma, I was embarrassed

– Always Like a Girl, SKII Change Destiny, Olay Live Fearlessly…as well as Tide, Ariel, Dawn and Swiffer, which show men sharing the load in household chores. It’s clear that promoting gender equality is not only a force for good, it’s a force for growth.”

Furthermore during Cannes Lions week, UN Women Executive Director, Phumzile Miambo-Ngcuka wrote an open letter to the global advertising industry, which read: “We want advertisers to not only portray the world as it is, which may perpetuate harmful cultural and social norms, but to show the world that we aspire to.”

UN Women also saluted its expanding lineup of partners to sign-up to the Unstereotype Alliance: “We salute those companies who have already joined this bold initiative: Alibaba, ANA, ATT, Cannes Lions, Diageo, Facebook, Geena Davis Institute, Google, IPA, IPG, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Mattel, Microsoft, P&G, The Female Quotient, Twitter, Unilever, WFA and WPP. And we warmly welcome our new members Adobe, Spotify, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Vodafone, European Association of Communication Agencies, Boston Consulting Group, UNICEF, Free the Bid and Jess Weiner.”

Power the Bid, presented by P&G, HP & Free the Bid, took place in the Girls Lounge at the Martinez Hotel on Monday, 18th June.

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Emotional control for a connected world

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Deloitte pitched a traditional creative brief against one generated by AI. Which would produce better creativity?

The creative brief, a decades-old format for generating marketing ideas is about to be disrupted by Artificial Intelligence. But will it have a positive impact on creativity or is the old way still the best?

That was the key question during ‘What is Creativity?’, a session hosted by Alicia Hatch, Deloitte Digital’s Chief Marketing Officer, featuring an on-stage interview with Anthony Reeves, Amazon’s former Executive Creative Director.

“The creative brief is by far the most debated topic at any advertising agency. Is it now time to restructure it by using data generated by AI to make that change?” Reeves asked.

To answer the question, Deloitte shared the results of its experiment involving a group of agency creatives, who were asked to respond to two briefs - one powered by AI insights and one made up from traditional methods.

The traditional creative brief triggered scepticism among the creatives about what was really needed. Its lack of real insight caused the majority to want more information from the client, which is a process that can often be time consuming.

The source of the audience insight was also questioned and thought potentially unreliable if it had come from a small focus group or even the whim of the marketing director.

The AI-generated brief provided consumer data that had been scaled enormously. Its audience insights therefore were based on a more reliable truth. This allowed the creatives to come up with ideas that would better reflect the end consumer and to produce their ideas much faster.

“With AI you can start from a place of truth so that data and insight has a greater chance of producing creative that will really connect with people,” Reeves told delegates. “For a long time, we’ve taken a brand’s product or service and worked forwards, towards the customer. With AI, we can begin with the customer and work backwards.

“AI removes a significant portion of the scepticism layer, enhances our storytelling by offering more and diverse ideas, accelerates speed to concept, and can improve subjectivity,” Reeves concluded. “Scepticism paralyses creativity. AI removes that scepticism.”

‘What is Creativity’, presented by Deloitte Digital, took place on the Innovation Stage, Palais II on Monday, 18th June.

UK-based startup, Emteq explains why biometrics in VR is the next step for humanity’s eventual merge with technology.

Biometrics is the next frontier in virtual reality (VR), according to a company that has invented a ‘faceplate’ that fits inside VR headsets and reads facial expressions.

UK-based startup Emteq, uses artificial intelligence and tiny sensors to read the electrical signals generated by facial muscle movement. This in turn could allow someone’s digital avatar to respond to emotional changes or carry out actions based on facial muscle control.

“We live in a world of emotional response. It drives our behaviour, our decision making and how we feel. Much of our emotion is shown through the eyes but with VR, that part of our body is hidden by the headset. We’ve developed technology that can be embedded into the faceplate or foam parts of virtual reality devices themselves,” Emteq CEO Graeme Cox told delegates.

“When you’re wearing it and change your facial expression, the sensors turn this into data and replicate this data on your digital avatar. Facial tracking is a big focus of development for VR devices, and a lot of systems use cameras which look bulky and weigh a device down. These also can’t track what’s going on beneath the faceplate,” he continued.

Cox was joined onstage by Adrian Leu, CEO of technology innovation agency, Inition. He said: “This technology will allow brands to create personalised content based on emotional

response mapping in virtual or augmented worlds. Brands can already measure the impact of gaze through heat mapping but it doesn’t tell you why that person is looking. When you add expression and arousal into the metrics, you can really start to iterate on product engagement by changing factors such as packaging colour or design.”

The technology, which can also be used in AR glasses, is further helping people with debilitating conditions such as Bells’ palsy, Parkinson’s and Autism.

“We’re moving through a transitional era for screens, which will eventually see them disappear and merge as part of our physical makeup,” Cox concluded. “By being able to read human emotion through VR headsets and AR glasses, this eventual state of zero UI (User Interface) will see us use our emotional reactions to manage the connected home and interact with the world around us.”

‘Biometrics: The New Frontier in VR Brand Experience’, presented by Inition, took place on the Interactive Stage, Palais II, on Monday 18th June.

Battle of the briefs

Battle of the briefs What is Creativity, took place on the Innovation Stage, Palais II on Monday, 18th June.

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Don’t let AI become the next digital technology to divide us, says the backers of Equal AI, launched at Cannes Lions 2018.

LivePerson, a provider of conversational commerce solutions, has launched an ambitious project to persuade brands to eradicate gender bias in the engineering of AI.

Equal AI, launched during Cannes Lions 2018, actively challenges the potential consequences of Artificial Intelligence, which is being evolved by organisations mostly dominated by men. The initiative is backed by, among others, Arianna Huffington, Martha Lane Fox, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of TalkTalk Group, Tristia Harrison.

The concern is that if AI creators use their own unconscious personal biases, they will unwittingly set benchmarks for all of society as their biases reappear in the algorithms. At the same time, machines are teaching themselves from data sets and texts that reflect or even amplify society’s past and present biases.

Founder and CEO of LivePerson, Robert LoCascio said: “As we enter the AI revolution that will define our future, women make up less than 30% of research positions worldwide. Even worse, across the largest tech companies, fewer than 20% of technical roles are held by women.

“While the world focuses on removing inequalities embedded across industries, we are simultaneously at risk of programming these very

Eliminating bias from AI

biases into the heart of the technologies shaping our future. We need the builders of tomorrow’s products to be more female-led and to agree to a set of standards, which avoid gender, racial, and ethnic bias, otherwise AI will become the next digital technology that divides us.”

In September 2018, Equal AI will publish a report with tangible and practical steps businesses can take to play their part in eliminating bias from AI. The report will call for engaged supporters to adopt these practices in their own businesses, setting a new standard for corporate responsibility on the issue.

In a recent survey commissioned by LivePerson, nearly 60% of U.S. consumers agreed with the statement that ‘AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation’.

When it came to the gender imbalance in the technology industry, most respondents were unaware of the current landscape, which is heavily male-dominated. Half of respondents said they believe the industry is made up of an equal mixture of both men and women. At the same time, only 8% of respondents said they could name a famous woman leader in technology, compared with the 57% who said they could name a male leader.

The ethical implications and unconscious bias of AI were discussed during several main stage sessions, including The Ethics of AI, presented by Fjord in The Forum, Palais I on Tuesday, 19th June, 2018

Google Creative Lab showed delegates what happens when creative ideas are used as a positive force for good in the world.

Wednesday, 20th June, 2018 was World Refugee Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world.

To mark the occasion, two speakers from Google Creative Lab took to the stage at Cannes Lions to emphasise what creativity can do to make the world a better place.

Steve Vranakis, Executive Creative Director, Google Creative Lab and Robert Wong, Vice President, Google Creative Lab, showed the audience their work to help the 7,000 Syrian refugees that were coming across the Aegean Sea and landing on the Greek islands in 2015.

“I’m Greek and my friends were on the beach, helping to hydrate people and show them to the camps but there was very little information on the ground,” Vranakis said.

“One key observation was that these people had barely any belongings but they had mobile phones. We knew that if we could provide charging stations and WiFi access then we could help with maps to camps, information on how to register for asylum, medical information and anything else people needed in their own native language.”

The result was a mobile website, which was created by Google’s London team in just 36-hours

Creative impact for good

and promoted to the Syrian refugees by Vranakis and Google’s Greek team on the ground.

“It was simple - white text on a black background to preserve phone battery and the URL promoted by putting stickers and posters all over the islands,” Vranakis continued. “It went from being used in one location to being rolled out in 18 different places and really made a difference to people’s lives.”

Other demonstrated examples of where Google’s creative team has impacted for good, included its work with UNICEF to showcase children’s messages to the UN’s General Assembly, via the creation of a digital totem pole exhibit in the foyer of the UN in New York, and how Google has worked with the Natural History Museums in London and Berlin to bring dinosaurs back to life via Google Cardboard VR experiences.

“There’s no limit to what creativity can do. Creativity has impacted what Google says, what it looks like, what it does in the world, and what it can do in the future,” Wong concluded. “Creatives should play a bigger role in inventing the future. Technology isn’t the key driver of innovation. It’s the human heart and human imagination that changes things and moves the world forward.

“Creativity is that heart and imagination manifesting itself in pencil sketches, ideas, prototypes and creative ideas, brought to life to shape the world we live in and the one we should want to leave in a better place for our children.”

‘What Creativity can do’, presented by Google, took place in the Lumiere Theatre, Palais I on Thursday, 21st June, 2018.

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Alan Kelly, Executive Creative Officer at Rothco, part of Accenture Interactive, and Eco Moliterno, Chief Creative Officer, Latin America at Accenture Interactive took to the Cannes Lions stage to predict AI’s impact on these four key roles.

The Art Director

According to Moliterno, we should always study the past in order to predict the future. He said: “Art was the very first form of visual advertising.

In paintings, kings were always portrayed as taller and more powerful, Jesus was

shown performing miracles, and the cross became the first visual logo, signifying

heaven, the crucifixion, the father, son and the holy ghost. Just as the painter’s brush has evolved, so too will our ability to combine machine

learning with human visual talent. AI can be taught to copy artistic styles

but it can never learn how to make mistakes, discover new genres and push artistic boundaries.”

Will AI kill off the roles of Creative, Art Director, Copywriter and Client?

Verdict: Only the uncurious, unprogressive Art Directors will be killed off by AI

The Copywriter

Kelly referred the Cannes Lions audience to the AI-written monologue, created for Zach Braff’s character J.D. in the hit TV show Scrubs, as an example of how AI hasn’t yet evolved to a point where Scriptwriters and Copywriters should start getting nervous.

The AI-created monologue starts off sounding rather close to any other Scrubs closing statement: “The truth is every patient suffers from dementia. I’m not going to change all that. After all, the right thing’s not always the best thing to do. You’d know that if you ever worked in a hospital.” Then things start going a bit off the rails: “What is a hospital? A hospital is a lot like a high school: the most amazing man is dying, and you’re the only one who wants to steal stuff from his dad…. And even though it sucks about doctor tapioca, not even that’s sad.”

Despite AI’s editorial shortcomings however, Kelly was keen to point out that if human copywriters continue to write ‘box ticking’ advertising that stifles creativity, they are little more than robots already.

Verdict: Only the bad Copywriters will be replaced by robots

The Producer

Moliterno issued a similar warning to those Producers who begin to get very formulaic the longer a television series remains on the air. The Netflix series, House of Cards was shown as an example.

“We still need Producers who can shock and surprise for the long-haul,” Moliterno told delegates. “The unpredictable nature of success means that when something such as Game of Thrones breaks the mould and steps outside of people’s comfort zones, the results can be phenomenal. AI can’t reproduce that unpredictability but humans can easily fall into formulaic processes.”

Verdict: Only lazy Producers will be eradicated by AI

The Client

Kelly admitted that too many clients have already had their creativity killed off by agencies who try to put them at ease with references designed to evoke feelings of familiarity.

He said: “When the agency fears that the client won’t want to risk a particular creative, they’re told that it’ll be similar to something that was successful in the past, or that the music will be a bit like a certain successful artist. As a result, when the creative work reaches the outside world, the audience feels that it’s too familiar and it ultimately gets overlooked. AI can learn to do safe and familiar.”

Verdict: Only clients who remain in their comfort zones risk replacement by AI

To conclude, Kelly and Moliterno were keen to show a key virtue of AI, after highlighting so many of its current-day negatives.

By way of a positive example, the Cannes Lions audience were shown ‘JFK Unsilenced’.

The Times newspaper and Rothco used AI to put John F. Kennedy’s voice to the speech he never got to make on the day of his assassination.

To make it happen, Rothco analysed recordings of Kennedy’s speeches to understand his timbre, tone and quirks, to authentically deliver the script as he would likely have done. Some 831 analogue recordings of JFK speeches and interviews were inserted into the AI system, whereupon a benchmark was set, from which new speech was synthesised.

“The result was incredible,” Kelly concluded. “AI allowed the creatives to ask the question, ‘what if?’. AI won’t replace the big creative idea, but it certainly allows us to enhance it and take it to another level.”

‘AI will kill Creative. AI will save Creative’, presented by Accenture Interactive, took place on the Interactive Stage, Palais II on Wednesday, 20th June, 2018

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Yogiraj Graham from Intel’s Agency Inside, discusses drones, facial mapping and Lady Gaga to show how technology can drive creative ideas.

The most important moment in marketing used to be the ‘light bulb moment’ - that moment when ideas occur and the technology of the day is then used to turn those ideas into creative realities.

But what if, the technology always came first? What would happen if technology’s potential drove the creative process?

Yogiraj Graham, Global Director, Intel Creative Content Labs, Agency Inside, took to the stage at Cannes Lions 2018 to explore this idea from his own experiences at Intel’s in-house creative group.

“Before I came to Intel three and half years ago, I had nothing technical in my education or career. I’d studied Romance Languages at University. I didn’t excel in the sciences or math. When conversations got technical, I simply tuned out,” he told delegates.

“I believed, wrongly as it turned out, that we should keep ourselves isolated from the rest of Intel in an effort to stay focused on creative ideas. What changed is that I started to tune into conversations in the cafeteria and elevators, by meeting people who worked in the technical and engineering parts of the company. I decided I could no longer allow myself to think of tech as something only tech people needed to pay attention to,” Graham continued.

Technology’s potential to drive the creative process

This shift in attitude led to a new creative approach, which began placing Intel’s technological capabilities at the forefront of creative ideas.

Initially, it resulted in 100 drones lighting up the night sky in different locations around the world, plus Intel’s collaboration with Lady Gaga at the 2016 Grammy Awards.

Lady Gaga’s tribute to David Bowie featured projection mapped visuals, robotics and interactive content that responded in real time to Lady Gaga’s every movement and command.

It then evolved into more record-breaking choreographed drone flights, which grew from 500 during the 2017 Super Bowl half-time show to most recently, 1,218 Shooting Star drones, which created some stunning visuals during the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

“The story behind the drone technology is simply that our CEO loves drones and loves breaking records,” Graham said. “He wanted the record for the most unmanned aircraft in flight simultaneously. Our Chief Creative Officer then got involved and met with the drone team. She asked what else these drones could do and discovered that it was possible to choreograph them to music. That curiosity, combined with the creative idea to fly them at night with lights on, has resulted in these incredible shows and a new event experience driven by the technology itself.”

Last autumn, Graham debuted a new project working with Chris Lee, one of the biggest pop and fashion icons in China.

Intel China had developed an AI-based technology that was capable of scanning a person’s face instantly, mapping design and objects to it, and then having facial expressions control those elements on a mask.

“The brief for the Chris Lee facial mapping project? A spec sheet, a crude demo and a target partner. Nothing else. We only knew that we had to feature the tech’s capabilities, showcase Chris Lee, and show how we were innovating,” Graham said.

“We struggled with that initially. If a normal brief is a riddle, this was like a riddle in a language we didn’t speak. We had to learn the language before we could try to solve it. The thing is, you can’t figure out how to use a technology to connect with an audience before understanding the tech itself. It has to show you what’s possible.

“We talked to the creators of the tech, to the engineers. Just as importantly, we talked to visual artists, motion designers and animators—anyone who could help us understand the artistic

potential of the technology. Within a few focused days, the work paid off.

“We came up with the idea of creating a music video in which 3D designs and masks across Chris’s face would take viewers on her emotional journey through the song—no motion capture technology necessary, saving endless days and nights of post-production. By grounding ourselves in our tech, we discovered how it could free us, and how to showcase something altogether new.”

As Global Director for the creative group within Intel, Graham obviously has more access to more remarkable technology than most other agency creatives, but he believes that it’s more about having a voracious curiosity, which ultimately leads to breakthroughs.

“Technology, when we view it as its own creative brief, can lead us to unexpected results,” Graham concludes. “Anything that challenges us to think in different ways, we should embrace. Be curious, find inspiration in new technology, make yourself an expert and seek out the myriad opportunities it presents.”

‘What Tech will tell you’, presented by Intel, took place on the Innovation Stage, Palais II on Wednesday, 20th June, 2018

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FIVE MINUTES WITH… Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of The Guardian/Guardian News & Media

Katharine Viner spoke at a drinks reception, co-hosted by PHD Worldwide and The Guardian, which took place on the roof terrace of Five Seas Hotel, during Cannes Lions 2018. During her keynote address, she spoke on the following themes;

When was the last time you came to Cannes Lions?

I haven’t been here for three years. The last time we came, I had just become editor and David Pemsel had just been appointed CEO but it hadn’t been announced yet. We had a wild time because we were so new. I’ve not been to Cannes over the last three years while we focused on sorting out our strategy and our finances. I’m pleased to say that we’re now in a great position to return to Cannes and talk about the Guardian’s successes.

What have been some of those successes journalistically?

We did the Paradise Papers, which was a global collaboration about tax avoidance. We were involved with The Daphne Project to continue the work of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was murdered for doing her job investigating corruption. We also broke the story of Cambridge Analytica and the Windrush scandal.

Which story are you proudest of?

Windrush is certainly my proudest moment as editor-in-chief. It started back in November when our brilliant reporter Amelia Gentleman uncovered a story about a woman who had moved to Britain from Jamaica as a child and who had done various jobs throughout her life including working in the canteen at the House of Commons.

She was threatened with deportation to a country that she hadn’t seen for 50 years and sent to a detention centre. It was one of those moments where everyone exclaimed ‘how could this happen?’ But then we were approached by another person who told us, the same thing had happened to him and two other people in his class at school. Sure enough, it wasn’t a glitch in the system, and there’s been 6,000 victims since. It brought about the resignation of Home Secretary, Amber Rudd and has started to pull apart the hostile environment policy towards immigrants in Britain that was introduced by the now Prime Minister, Theresa May. It’s a story that has taken six months to develop and proves in my mind that the British people aren’t as racist as the politicians believe them to be.

How much has the Guardian’s financial turnaround empowered its ability to uncover stories such as Windrush and Cambridge Analytica?

Anyone who has followed our story knows that three years ago, Guardian Media Group was losing £57 million, two years ago, we’d cut those losses to £38 million, and last year, we made a loss of £19 million. This year, we will break even. We’ve now had two years of revenue growth, which is pretty unusual in British news publishing. It’s happened thanks to a combination of strong advertising and our new model built around reader contributions. More than 800,000 readers have given financial support to the Guardian in the last twelve months whether for digital or print. They’ve done it because they believe in what our journalists do and by doing so, they’re empowering these stories.

What is the Guardian’s mission and purpose moving forward?

We’re currently facing four layers of crisis on a global, national, local and personal level. These impact how we view our environment, fears around technology, the toxic political landscape in different countries and the collapse of local communities, which together have led to increased rates of depression and anxiety in young people.

I believe that the Guardian’s role now is to provide hope. It’s about really understanding our society, trying to contextualise it, striving to report accurately on it and show clearly what it means without optimism or pessimism. Authentic hope requires clarity and imagination. That’s what we’re aiming for - clarity of facts and the ability to imagine a new kind of world. To do this, we’ll diversify our news rooms to better reflect the world we report on and collaborate with more partners.

We aim to build trust and meaningful hope for our readers, something that’s important to all brands.

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PHD Worldwide brought Psychologist and The School of Life tutor Oliver James to Cannes in order to encourage creatives and organisations to find their inner playful child..

As we grow up, external demands such as parental discipline and education, increasingly get in the way of play. There’s good evidence however that if children’s play is allowed to infuse their educational lives, it actually improves

Creativity on the couch

performance. Play is creativity at its purest. It’s a way of fulfilling our wishes and fantasies, as well as sometimes expressing traumas or prohibited desires.

This is the view expressed by psychologist and author, Oliver James who put ‘Creativity on the Couch’ during his keynote session at Cannes Lions 2018.

PHD Worldwide partnered with The School of Life, a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence, to bring James to Cannes Lions 2018.

James was introduced by Mike Cooper, CEO Worldwide at PHD Worldwide. Cooper set the scene by telling delegates: “Today, creativity is experiencing a midlife crisis. With more and more brands looking to their agencies to refocus them back onto creativity in the face of technology and automation, we need to be able to show diversity of thought, processes and most importantly, talent.

“Neurodiversity should be a top priority for any agency that values creativity and innovation,” he continued. “Conditions such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia can often help individuals see things in more visionary ways, challenging and pushing creativity further. Without the ability to work together - whether that’s people of different backgrounds, cultures, disabilities or skill-sets, creativity will stall in the face of technology’s relentless evolutionary march.”

James then told delegates: “In later life, finding new ways to make-believe, and yet stay connected to external reality, is crucial for emotional health. Adults who have lost the capacity to play have died. My key message today is that to be creative in your business, your childlike capacity for pretence and play must be nourished, both by you and the organisation in which you work.

A crucial component of how adults work and play together is through what James calls ‘Personas’.

One of the best illustrations of someone who took control of his personas and used them to heighten his creativity, while often expressing his deepest fears, was David Bowie.

“At the simplest level, Ziggy Stardust enabled both David Jones (his birth name) and David Bowie (his stage persona), to achieve their goal of international stardom,” James said. “But the

fascinating thing is that Ziggy also was a persona through which Bowie confronted his fear of madness and suicide.

“You however do not need to give yourself a different name to grasp that there are many different people within you who are longing to come out to play. Playful creative personas are unleashed both by work you can do on yourself and by organisations providing spaces in which they flourish.”

James went on to advise three ways for people to ‘up their Ziggy’, which included listing existing personas, searching for new personas or forgotten old ones, and mining your playful child within.

From an organisational perspective, James recommended that companies should foster safe environments for employees to feel good about unleashing their inner child, let creatives go off-message and out-of-bounds, and include metrics such as ‘how often have you made a colleague smile in the past week’ as part of performance reviews.

“As the neurodiversity movement is proving, people who have autistic, dyslexic, even sociopathic brain patterns, often have very unusual skills and contributions to offer,” James concurred. “Neurodiversity argues that just because someone seems odd, does not mean they are mentally ill or incapable, just different. Silicon Valley has understood this and so should you.

“To future-proof the industry, agencies need to not only be able to identify diverse talents, but to go deeper in understanding their childhood in order to develop and nourish those individuals. As creative people, David Bowie explains it best by saying, ‘You have to accommodate your pasts within your persona - it helps you reflect what you are now,” concluded James.

Following his appearance on the main stage at Cannes Lions, James then joined a panel hosted by PHD UK Chairman Hugh Cameron, and

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PHD HAS TEAMED UP WITH THE SCHOOL OF LIFE

TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

HOW MIGHT ORGANISATIONS SPOT, NURTURE AND CULTIVATE

CREATIVITY IN THE WORKPLACE?

featuring Ketchum UK CEO Jo-ann Robertson and comedian, writer and host of The Guilty Feminist Podcast, Deborah Frances-White.

‘Overcoming the Bias and Barriers Blocking Workplace Creativity and Innovation’ discussed some of the practical applications of James’ main stage insights.

Ketchum’s Robertson said: “Building a diverse team and workforce isn’t easy. There is a reason people want to work with other people who are like them. So, when you bring someone in because of their difference, don’t ask them to be like everyone else. Work hard at getting them

accepted for who they are and the different perspective they bring.”

Frances-White agreed adding: “It isn’t for black women to fix racism, and it isn’t for women to fix sexism. We all have a role to play. We need to have the confidence to call out inappropriate behaviour where and wherever we see it.”

PHD’s ‘Creativity on the Couch’, took place in the Debussy Theatre, Palais I on Tuesday, 19th June. ‘Overcoming the Bias and Barriers Blocking Workplace Creativity and Innovation’ then took place on the Innovation Stage, Palais II later that day.

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