Cannes Matters – 24.06.22

YES WE CANNES

It’s been a great week, to say the least! It has been brilliant to be back in person once again at LIONS with our industry peers from across the world to celebrate creativity in Cannes. Our week has been full of events, networking and lots of exciting activities.

You can catch up on everything we’ve been doing at our Cannes Lions Hub, but here’s a brief recap:

We arrived on Sunday evening, after our train journey from London, which you can read about here. On Monday, we met with the 41 companies on our special UK trade mission, which was launched by our UK Advertising Exports Group and the Department for International Trade. Our Director of International Trade, Aisling Conlon, wrote an opinion piece on our ambitions for Cannes Lions and our aims to help businesses grow around the world, showcasing UK advertising in the most sustainable and inclusive ways we can. You can read that via Campaign here.  Read all about our first hours down at Cannes here.

Tuesday was a big day for us as we announced our intentions to expand our climate initiative, Ad Net Zero, internationally. You can find out more about it below. Additionally, our Director of Communications, Matt Bourn, took to the stage at Havas Café to talk about greenwashing and the different sustainability initiatives across our industry. Read all about it here. Meanwhile, our CEO, Stephen Woodford, was on stage with Dentsu, Heineken and Kraft Heinz discussing the power of advertising to drive wide scaled behaviour change for a more sustainable future. Catch up with everything that happened on Tuesday here.

On Wednesday, we gathered at the Kantar Apartments with creative minds, insight professionals and marketers to learn from the winners of The Works – our media partnership with Kantar and Marketing Week, a crucial initiative as part of our plan to increase public trust in advertising. Learn more about the event here.

Our International Trade Director, Aisling Conlon, also hosted with PwC, a roundtable event on the future of commerce to discuss whether the consumer is global rather than local.

Yesterday, our Commercial Director and Inclusion Lead, Sharon Lloyd Barnes, hosted a panel on All In – our initiative to build a workplace where everyone belongs – and our colleague Jo Fenn, AdGreen’s Project Director, spoke on two sustainability panels. Read all about that here.

However, there’s one thing we are a little sad about. Our mascot, Paddington, went missing on Tuesday night, last seen greeting guests at our Creativity Rocks party. If anyone spots him, please let us know!  #FINDPADDINGTON

AD NET ZERO GOES GLOBAL

In very exciting news, on Tuesday, we announced the internationall rollout of Ad Net Zero at Cannes Lions. The Ad Net Zero programme is our industry-wide initiative, together with ISBA and the IPA, to reach net zero  ad operations by 2030.The world’s major advertising agency holding companies, dentsu international, Havas, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe and WPP, along with Unilever – one of the world’s largest advertisers, global tech companies, Google and Meta, plus European media company Sky, will be supported by US trade bodies, ANA, 4A’s and the IAB, the WFA representing global advertisers, European and global agency associations, EACA and Voxcomm, and the IAA to extend the Ad Net Zero programme from the UK to other major advertising markets.

We have also launched a brand new website to house all-things Ad Net Zero from now on –  adnetzero.com – so do go and check that out!

This is a huge step forwards for Ad Net Zero and we are very proud of this progress.

You can read all about the announcement here.

It was great to see how this initiative is being welcomed across the world, with the announcement being covered in global media such as The Wall Street Journal, Singapore Star, and Campaign US as well as on partner sites like Omnicom.  The expansion of Ad Net Zero has also been reported across industry media including the likes of LBB, Business Green, Marketing Week.

#BETHECHANGE WITH BRIXTON FINISHING SCHOOL

Ever wondered how your organisation can #BeTheChange? Well, if so, your time is now: Brixton Finishing School is holding their first virtual #BeTheChange Power-Hour on June 30th at 1pm.

This virtual event is designed to provide you with all the information you need to further progress a decision to join the Change-Making alliance.

Whether you’re an agency, media & tech owner, a brand, or a corporation – make sure you join the #BeTheChange Power-Hour and learn how to invest in employment equity, social justice, and inclusion.

Register now to find out how you and your organisation can join Brixton Finishing School’s #ChangeMaking Engine and build an equitable talent pipeline into our industry.

Also… don’t panic if you cannot make it to the event! You can get in touch with Brixton Finishing School, and they will get the recording sent to you.

A SPECIAL THANK YOU

Finally, we want to thank our industry partners, APA, Clear Channel, Channel 4, Framestore, M&C Saatchi, Pinterest, PwC and all 41 of our trade mission companies for helping us #SeeThingsDifferently this Cannes Lions. A special thank you also goes to the Department of International Trade (DIT) and the UK Advertising Exports Group (UKAEG) for making this trade mission possible.

Thanks so much for having us, Cannes! We are already counting down the days to next year’s festival!