Drone swarm forms letters “AI ART & INTELLIGENCE” and “KARGO” over Cannes yachts
Hundreds of dark drones flew from a construction site nest to hover above the yachts off the coast. Their lights flickered on to form a blue and white hand pointing to the sky. They rearranged themselves into huge letters reading “AI.” They shifted again to read “ART & INTELLIGENCE.” They shifted a third time to say “KARGO.”
This is Cannes Lions. It is a week-long event in Cannes, France, where everything serves as an advertisement for advertisements. Big tech companies and major advertisers send thousands of employees to wine and dine on yachts, in bars, cafes, and brand activations on the beach. Executives form relationships here that result in billions of dollars of ad spend. This spending shapes how people buy things, how they are advertised to, and how the internet functions.
I went this year after friends mentioned it as part of their work. A big emphasis was on advertisers collaborating with creators. I held a press pass to report, meet potential advertisers, attend parties, and spend time on the beach during one of Europe’s worst heat waves. I expected the conference to be ridiculous based on past reports. The event was over-the-top in every conceivable way.
Every surface becomes a sales pitch
The entire conference is an advertisement for different types of advertising. The Cannes trolley cars running up and down the beach were bought out by Strava. Ads on the trolleys claimed, “Ads don’t get people active. Strava Sponsored Challenges do. Reach over 195 million active people on Strava.” About half of the cars navigating the winding streets were wrapped with ads for advertising on Uber, Lyft, or other platforms.
DoorDash took over a store directly next to Versace. PayPal took over a patisserie. Billboards advertised billboard ads, though every employee I spoke to insisted their job was “boring.” They noted the buzz had moved from “outdoor” to “IRL,” a term for events featuring video billboard ads.
KARGO’s drone ad promoted drone advertising. Serve Delivery robots drove around advertising the fact you can place ads on them. The United Arab Emirates advertised its willingness to approve ideas others rejected. Life360, an app for parental surveillance, held a week of programming including tips on advertising on the platform. The JW Marriott offered information on advertising via the Marriott BonVoy rewards program. United Airlines provided details on advertising on their flights. Chase built a structure about advertising to Chase cardholders.
OpenAI and Reddit had large presences explaining how to advertise to Redditors and ChatGPT users. Reddit executives tried to walk a careful line, stating Reddit is “the most human place on the internet” while acknowledging it is widely scraped by large language models. OpenAI explained that humans make decisions based on what its robots say.
I wandered into Meta’s beach compound to catch a panel on using Gen Z influencers. A video sign read “Cringe or Cool? Creators who educate instead of entertain.” Free streaming TV giant Tubi had an indoor activation where visitors had to walk through a curtain resembling Goatse. I passed a panel detailing the creativity behind a specific tweet made by the KitKat account.
Kevin Durant, Shaquille O’Neal, Oprah, Alex Rodriguez, Seth Meyers, and Bryson DeChambeau were all present. They discussed new podcasts, video series, partnerships, or creative visions. Durant spoke about “building culture not just content.”
A place to drink rosé rather than decide strategy
The conference is so big and represents every possible type of advertising that it is impossible to have one single takeaway or to analyze one specific trend. Some people I spoke to said they were worried about artificial intelligence. Others saw it as an opportunity. Some argued advertising needed to be more human, while many billboards and panels suggested much of the work could be automated.
If you arrived with a narrative or grand pronouncement about the future of advertising, you could probably find a panel to confirm that belief. What was immediately clear is that the main purpose is for the industry to hang out and drink rosé and spritzes on the beach, on yachts, in bars, and bistros. It would be possible to handle the business aspects at a hotel in Pennsylvania, Maryland, or Vegas, but that would defeat the overall purpose. The goal appears to be drinking champagne in the south of France.
Beach activations and obscurity
Every major tech company had a “plage,” or beach activation area. These consisted of tents, bars, and stages for panels and highly paid concerts. The result was often people in sneakers, khakis, and dress shirts standing on the sand talking to each other a few hundred feet from vacationers swimming in the ocean.
Besides Salesforce Beach, Microsoft Gardens, and Canva Creative Cabana, there was “Sport Beach,” The Female Quotient, Google/YouTube Beach, the “Reddit Cafeteria,” and more. Just behind the plages are other brand activations in hotels or luxury stores. A DoorDash Ads store was located directly next to Versace.
The Carleton hotel was divided into “TikTok Jardins,” LinkedIn Rooftop, MIQ House, and rooms for “The Team,” Vox Media, and Fox. These plages were not to be confused with “BRAND BEACH,” a separate area filled with little cubes for brands to take meetings in.
There were also many companies with inscrutable names and impossible-to-explain products. I attended numerous panels where one speaker listed a series of acronyms or products, and another panelist or the moderator responded, “I have no idea what you just said.”
A billboard read, “DSPs are on the TV sidelines: Tatari gets brands in the big game.” Another huge billboard asked, “Tell us what Braze does.” When I walked by the Braze tent, someone asked them what Braze does, and the answer was deeply unclear. Their website stated, “Braze is a customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging.™”
Conveo pitched “Always on customer understanding.” MiQ pitched the idea that you can buy ads with artificial intelligence and create digital AI personas. An ad in front of the Carleton hotel read, “Sigma’s upgraded gen-AI omnichannel audiences gives advertisers over 1 million targeting options.”
I saw a billboard that just said “Infillion Yieldmo.” Another billboard simply read “Creative as an AI-operated system.” A car driving around Cannes read “an AI bough” before the message cut off.
