The winners of this year’s festival highlight that advertising, in its rush to prove that it is pro-technology, has become anti-people
Most people in advertising agencies work ridiculously long hours against impossible deadlines, so a week letting off steam on the French Riviera is no bad thing. Of course the Cannes Lions festival is a ridiculous affair – it should be, and its grotesqueness is part of its charm. A more serious question is whether Cannes is really celebrating creativity at all – and what that might mean for the future of the advertising industry.
Notice I say industry. I could have said “the craft” of advertising, but those days are gone. Ever since the big takeover deals of the 1980s and the emergence of mega-sized holding companies, the notion of craft has been slowly snuffed out of advertising. Craft is one thing you can’t process. Craft is one thing you can’t industrialise to the point of maximum efficiency. It is by its nature idiosyncratic and relies heavily on the conditions around it. In recent decades, as media agencies have been spun off from the full-service agencies, content, carefully crafted for its context, has died a quiet death.
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