AI and sports were hot topics at the ad industry's Cannes Lions bash. Just don't mention 'brand safety.'
AI and sports were hot topics du jour at the ad industry's annual confab, Cannes Lions, this week.
The bustling streets suggested AI isnt decimating the ad industry yet.
Brand safety was the elephant in the room.
The scorching hot sun is setting on advertising's annual shindig in the south of France, Cannes Lions, for another year.
At the sprawling event, there was a level of thematic whiplash. In the span of an hour on the main stage in the Palais you go from hearing about the creation of the iconic Snickers "You're only you when you're hungry" campaign to hearing a speech from human-rights activist Sonita Alizadeh on the humanitarian crisis of child brides in Iran and Afghanistan.
There was also a whole lot of partying. Spotify's beach concert stage hosted rapper Cardi B and indie rockers Royel Otis. Diplo was spinning the decks for Yahoo. Talent agency UTA's annual VIP "dinner" at the luxury Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc had no sit-down meal but instead a punchy set from comedian Sebastian Maniscalco.
Business Insider was on the ground — and occasionally the yachts — to get the inside look on the big topics that are top of mind in an industry undergoing seismic changes. Here were the key themes.
The AI of it all
If the advertising industry is losing people to artificial intelligence, it certainly didn't look like it at Cannes this week. The streets were bursting with lanyard-wearing, hungover Lions attendees trying to figure out which opulent branded beach setup their next meeting was located. Still, AI was the talk of the town.
With AI spinning up thousands of ads cheaply and in seconds, the business model of billing clients for time is under threat. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg ruffled feathers ahead of Cannes when he said AI will essentially automate the ad business.
"You tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account, you don't need any creative, you don't need any targeting demographic, you don't need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out," he said in a May interview with the tech newsletter Stratechery. (Is that the sound of Don Draper dropping his glass of rosé, we hear in the distance?!)
In an interview with BI, Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, said his boss was talking about small businesses, not Fortune 500 brands.
"I don't see myself fully automating my ad campaigns and not using my agency at any point," Schultz said.
(Donny D! Come back, you're safe!)
For all the promises of AI, advertising still appears to be a people business. Cannes showed people in the ad industry believe that relationships matter. It's how attendees convince the finance department back home that the $5,000 festival pass, flights, Airbnb, meals, and a 2 a.m. expense receipt for a Jéroboam of Rosé at the Carlton Hotel was all worth it.
Marketers are racing to sports
If you haven't got an F1 sponsorship deal, are you even a CMO in 2025?
Sports was a pervasive theme at Cannes Lions this year, and athletes were out in force. Take a stroll down the famous — and exceptionally hot — Croisette promenade, and you had a good chance of bumping into tennis champ Serena Williams, McLaren Racing driver Oscar Piastri, or Kansas City Chiefs tight end — and Taylor Swift beau — Travis Kelce. Advertising company Stagwell's "Sport Beach" had some of the longest lines in town, some for the star-studded panels, others for the bragging rights of trouncing a colleague at pickleball. (Disclosure: BI hosted an event on Sport Beach, too.)
With traditional, or linear, TV viewing in decline, sports is one of the last destinations where marketers can guarantee getting their brands in front of large audiences.
"It's a way of being involved right in the moment, live," Michael Lacorazza, CMO US Bank, told BI. US Bank is involved in numerous teams and recently announced its partnership with the Premier Lacrosse League.
It's not just about placing 30-second spots or slapping logos on jerseys. Marketers talked up how they're enhancing the live experience in stadiums while people are in a joyful mood. Uber Advertising was pitching clients using a case study from beauty brand La Mer, which sponsored rides to and from the Miami F1 Grand Prix, stuffed with skincare goodies.
F1 is having a moment. According to the research firm Ampere Analysis, sponsorship spending on F1 and its teams is expected to reach $2.9 billion this year, up 10% on 2024. With viewership boosted in part by the popular Netflix series "Drive to Survive," brands and media partnerships are helping extend its reach beyond the race track.
"Seeing the new fans come into the sport, we needed to show up in their worlds and be meaningful in their worlds," Louise McEwan, chief marketing officer of the McLaren Racing F1 team, told BI. "Only one percent of fans ever go to the track in their lifetime."
Putting consumers in charge
The power of the consumer is stronger than ever.
At the Tubi cabana at Cannes, we spoke with its chief marketing officer, Nicole Parlapiano, who shared how the streaming platform is super-flexible in how it's marketing its titles. Streamers like Tubi can't easily test shows and movies before they acquire them, so they relentlessly monitor social chatter to determine how much and where to market a show, Parlapiano said.
Daniel Lawrence Taylor's hit show "Boarders" got a billboard in New York City's Times Square. And that's down to Parlapiano's team being flexible, pouring extra marketing dollars into "Boarders" after seeing the social media reaction, she said.
Laurie Lam, chief brand officer of E.l.f Beauty, said at a BI event that its product pipeline is often driven by what consumers are saying on social media.
"They're telling us exactly what they want and we're then putting it into the market for them," Lam said.
"And they're not polite about it, by the way," she added. "It used to be like, 'Hey, I would really love it if you can make this primer.' Now it's like, 'Make that primer now. Where is my primer?'"
Brand safety becomes a brand risk
Amid all the talk of AI supercharging creativity, and humanity being the ad industry's "super power," there was a big topic execs on the Croisette went super out of their way to avoid.
People noticeably squirmed as we asked questions about the current debate around brand safety — a catch-all industry term to describe how advertisers avoid platforms and media that don't align with their brand. A few years ago, you couldn't move for panels on the topic at Cannes, with speakers calling on big platforms to do more to protect brands. This year, with the US government questioning the propriety of those decisions? Crickets.
Barely anyone at Cannes wanted to discuss this enormous elephant in the room. Even the term " brand safety" has become a kind of Voldemort, "He who should not be named" word. One exec told us that the industry is more comfortable talking about "brand assurance" instead, whatever that really means in practice.
Perhaps nobody wants a target on their back. The turnabout shows how Cannes Lions holds a telling mirror into the industry, where sometimes what's not being talked about can also speak volumes.
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