We went to Meta’s Cannes In The City
And besides the macarons, here are the key things that Richard Brooks took away
Meta brought the best of Cannes to an event in London - including rosé and macarons. Kinase took up the invite, and besides ‘sucks that you didn’t get to spend a week in the South of France’, our main takeaways were:
Creative is still the new targeting, and remains the most important determinant of how well a campaign will perform.
No one has an attention span anymore, least of all Gen Z. But you can gain cumulative attention and influence across a series of mico-moments, rather than trying to hold attention across a single long piece of creative.
More than ever creative needs to be ultra specific, and relevant to the viewer. Being of the moment, pulling in social purpose, and being able to build authentic connection improves performance.
Being able to iterate quickly on multiple audience specific creatives is a big advantage - something Kinase is already doing by capitalising on AI creative tools.
Working with with creators (influencers) is a powerful way to connect audiences with relevant content. On this point, Meta pushed their Creator exchanges as a way of easily partnering up with the right people - something which Kinase manages for our social clients.
Of course, there are also contradictions in the world of advertising. As there was at the real Cannes, chat around AI can lead to anxiety,
Contradictions can be writ large at Cannes Lions which styles itself as ‘The Oscars of Advertising’, even when transplanted to London. For example, Coca Cola had a Silver category winner that was all about coming together around the Olympics. This was for their Powerade brand, winning in the Brand Experience: Corporate Purpose and Social Responsibility category. But Coca Cola are also the world’s biggest plastics polluter, so how important is Social Purpose really, compared to throwing a big pile of money at the Olympics?
“the gain from huge mega budgets is lessening”
What this also reflects is that the gain from huge mega budgets is lessening, in a world of AI content creation. While not everyone is aiming to win a Cannes Lions award, what everyone can benefit from is doubling down on the proliferation of their content. The aim is for that content to be more relevant, engaging and high performing.
With the AI creative tools now available via Kinase, this is becoming a lot easier. Even for smaller brands who would love 1% of Coke’s ad budget.
