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For all the star-studded splendor of\u00a0the\u00a0Cannes\u00a0Lions\u00a0International Festival of Creativity, its origins were remarkably modest. To find them, you must leave the French Riviera entirely and return to a warm September afternoon in 1954, in St. Mark\u2019s Square in Venice.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Europe was still rebuilding after the war, commercial television had yet to spread across the continent, and cinema remained the only mass audiovisual medium available to advertisers outside America. A group of cinema-advertising executives, inspired by the glitz and glamour of the Cannes Film Festival, decided that advertising deserved the same artistic legitimacy as film itself.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
And just like that,\u00a0the first International Advertising Film Festival was born. It drew just a few hundred attendees and there was only a single competition category. The inaugural Grand Prix went to an Italian commercial for toothpaste. Those in attendance could scarcely have imagined what the festival would eventually become.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
This June,\u00a0over\u00a0seventy\u00a0years on, tens of thousands will descend on Cannes. These days, the crowds lining the\u00a0Croisette\u00a0extend far beyond advertisers and filmmakers. Chief executives, venture capitalists, technology founders,\u00a0and finance leaders are among the throngs flocking to the festival, all drawn by a growing conviction that creativity now sits at the centre of business strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet as creativity\u2019s influence has expanded, so too have the pressures upon it.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many in the industry fear that the conditions that allow great ideas to flourish are becoming harder to sustain.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among the familiar faces raising the alarm is Rob Reilly, WPP\u2019s\u00a0global\u00a0chief\u00a0creative\u00a0officer, who oversees\u00a0creative strategy across one of the world\u2019s largest advertising companies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHuman creativity is under fire,\u201d he tells\u00a0Fortune. \u201cWithout it, society will lose far more than its capacity to innovate. Everything that brings joy, peace, or inspiration\u2014music, art, sports, and even simple hobbies like baking\u2014is a product of creativity.\u201d\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much of this pressure stems from the rise of AI in advertising. The future cracked open by this technology is full of both awful and awesome possibilities. That duality is a challenge for organizations investing heavily in these tools, Reilly says.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a company like WPP\u00a0which\u00a0is deep into technology and deep into AI\u2026the tension is:\u00a0where does human creativity fit in?\u201d\u00a0he notes. The danger is that organizations, captivated by technological possibility, begin to mistake capability for value. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to get distracted by technology,\u201d he says. \u201cAI in the hands of a skilled, visionary, creative person could be incredibly inspiring,\u201d he says. \u201cBut in the hands of hacks, it\u2019s only going to create more and more drivel.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
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WPP\u00a0ranking on Fortune 500\u00a0Europe<\/p>\n
Even as\u00a0creative\u00a0work\u00a0has become a prized corporate asset, many of the people responsible for producing\u00a0it\u00a0believe its value\u00a0remains\u00a0poorly understood, and poorly rewarded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marketing budgets have come under pressure as brands grapple with inflation, economic uncertainty,\u00a0and demands for short-term efficiency.\u00a0According to\u00a0Gartner\u2019s\u00a02026 CMO Survey,\u00a0marketing budgets have fallen to 9.6% of total company budgets, down from 11.4% a year earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry that creativity continues to be undervalued by the businesses that rely on it, how it\u2019s paid for\u2026all those things\u201d Reily says.\u00a0In his view, the problem is partly structural. \u201cOur business has not done itself a lot of\u00a0favors\u00a0when it comes to figuring out a really smart commercial model,\u201d he argues, adding that \u201cthe advertising industry is struggling a bit and, you know\u2026will continue to struggle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Protecting great ideas\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
A pressing question is whether organizations that depend on human creativity still know how to cultivate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in the hands of hacks, it\u2019s only going to create more and more drivel\u201d<\/p>\n
Rob Reilly, WPP\u2019s\u00a0global\u00a0chief\u00a0creative\u00a0officer<\/p>\n
For Eric Monnet,\u00a0chief of\u00a0staff and\u00a0global\u00a0director of\u00a0creative\u00a0excellence at WPP, the answer begins with leadership. \u201cThe most consistent thing I have heard from senior CMOs over the past year is that creative ambition is a quality of the leaders inside brands who intentionally decide to champion it, defend it, and build the conditions for it to survive,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contrary to\u00a0popular belief, creative excellence is rarely the result of a single breakthrough campaign. More often, it\u00a0emerges\u00a0from leadership teams willing to invest in\u00a0ideas consistently and\u00a0shield\u00a0those who came up with them\u00a0from the pressures of quarterly thinking.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evidence of this can be found in some of the industry\u2019s most enduring success stories. Dove\u2019s \u201cReal Beauty\u201d campaign began more than two decades ago with a simple cultural insight and has since evolved into a brand platform worth an estimated $7.5 billion. Similarly, Volvo\u2019s \u201cEVA Initiative\u201d,\u00a0which was\u00a0built on the company\u2019s longstanding commitment to safety, releasing decades of proprietary crash-test data so that women could be safer in every vehicle, not just a Volvo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, Monnet argues that large organizations are often structured in ways that make great creativity harder, not easier, to produce.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost unnatural for a large\u00a0organization\u00a0to be able to create great work,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a lot of forces that go against creativity, and none of them are villains.\u201d CFOs, he says, are focused on efficiency, procurement departments on cost control, legal teams on risk management, and operations leaders on consistency. Each is performing a necessary function.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most consistent thing I have heard from senior CMOs over the past year is that creative ambition is a quality of the leaders inside brands who intentionally decide to champion it, defend it, and build the conditions for it to survive\u201d<\/p>\n
Eric Monnet,\u00a0chief of\u00a0staff and\u00a0global\u00a0director of\u00a0creative\u00a0excellence at WPP<\/p>\n
The challenge is that creativity often requires organizations to tolerate uncertainty, embrace risk and make long-term investments whose value cannot always be measured immediately. \u201cThere must be a shared value for creativity across the organization,\u201d Monnet insists. \u201cWhen a brand views creativity as a force multiplier for growth rather than just an expense, it becomes easier to navigate the internal pressures.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
New chapter, same values\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
This may be the defining tension hanging over Cannes Lions this year. The festival was founded on the belief that\u00a0advertising\u00a0deserved recognition as\u00a0a discipline\u00a0worthy of artistic respect. Seventy years later,\u00a0creative\u00a0work\u00a0has\u00a0arguably never\u00a0been more important to business. Yet many of the people responsible for it feel undervalued, whether by financial models that\u00a0fail to\u00a0reward it properly or\u00a0by technological narratives that threaten to reduce it to a process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCannes Lions has a thousand doors,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cPerhaps only\u00a0a hundred of them lead directly into traditional creative work. The other nine hundred open into fields that would have seemed peripheral to advertising a generation ago\u2014data science, venture capital, platform economics, creator ecosystems,\u00a0and emerging technologies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Reilly, however, none of this represents a departure from the festival\u2019s original mission. He rejects the notion that creative ambition and commercial performance exist in opposition to one another. While Cannes continues to celebrate originality and craft, it increasingly rewards work that delivers measurable impact in the real world. \u201cWe don\u2019t celebrate anything that doesn\u2019t have good business results,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That belief underpins his optimism about the industry\u2019s future. While acknowledging that there are \u201cthings we need to fix,\u201d Reilly argues that the pace of change should excite rather than discourage creative professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people aren\u2019t psyched to be part of the industry now, they\u2019re out of their minds,\u201d\u00a0he says. \u201cThe industry is changing so fast. If you\u2019re not on the train, you\u2019re going to be left behind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a lesson Cannes has reinforced for seven decades. The industry has weathered the arrival of television, the internet, social media, and every technological revolution in between.\u00a0Each transformed how ideas were created and distributed, but none diminished the value of the idea itself.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is hope\u2014beneath the spectacle, the branded cabanas, AI demos and ros\u00e9-fuelled networking\u2014that the original premise of that Venetian gathering still lingers. The belief that creativity, properly understood, is not an indulgence of business, but one of its most powerful engines.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n
#Human #creativity #fire #saysWPPs #Rob #Reilly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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