Adam Biddle is founder of Gho5t, a social-first agency that has spent 18 years helping everyone from Robbie Williams and Lily Allen to global banks and tech unicorns show up properly on social media.
He is speaking on a panel at Cannes Lions this year as part of New Digital Age’s Panel Power initiative, our industry-leading speaker training programme.
We caught up with him ahead of the festival to get his unfiltered take on making panels deliver value for participants.
You speak at events constantly. What’s the one thing most speakers get fundamentally wrong?
The obsession with scale.
Everyone goes into Cannes thinking success means going viral, getting 100,000 views on a LinkedIn video, being seen by as many people as possible. I think that’s entirely the wrong frame.
Success at an event like Cannes should be getting three genuinely valuable leads that convert into something real within 12 months.
That’s it. It sounds almost antisocial coming from a social media person, but the whole broadcast mentality is killing people’s ability to actually build anything meaningful.
So what should speakers be doing instead?
Chasing depth, not attention. The most powerful thing you can do on a panel is invite people into your world rather than promoting yourself outward.
If you approach a panel thinking “how do I get everyone to follow me,” you’ve already lost. If you approach it thinking “how do I start three genuinely interesting conversations,” you’ll walk away with something.
You have a very specific three-step approach to panels. Can you walk us through it?
It comes down to prime, name drop, and offer.
Say you know someone from Aviva is in the audience. You don’t just hope they notice you, you engineer it. First, you prime your content around their world, financial services, regulated industries, complex decisions.
Then, you drop their name directly into what you’re saying, “a business like Aviva has a genuinely interesting opportunity here.” The person in the room suddenly thinks, this person is talking about me. And then you close it by telling the room you have something specific, a piece of research, a framework, a new approach, that you’d love to share with anyone from that kind of business. Come and find me after.
What if you don’t know who’s in the audience?
You go a level up. Instead of naming a company, you name an industry. Food and beverage, or financial services, or regulated tech. The principle is exactly the same.
You prime the room with content that speaks to that world, you name the sector, and you give people a reason to seek you out. The key is always that third step, offering something they can only get by coming to you directly. Without that hook, you’re just another person on a panel making interesting noises.
What about the actual content of what you say? How do you make it stick?
If you can’t do the full three-step approach, there’s a simpler version. Say one thing that everyone remembers, but signal it clearly before you say it.
Tell the room, “forget everything else from this panel, take this one thing away.” That primes people to listen differently. But it only works if what comes next is actually worth remembering. You can’t wind people up like that and then say something obvious. It has to land.
And once Cannes is over, how do you keep the momentum going?
Everything has to connect back to that one thing you said that made an impact. Your follow-up message references it, your LinkedIn content builds on it, and ideally you’re already evolving it.
The best follow-up isn’t “great to meet you.” It’s “I’ve been thinking about that thing I mentioned on the panel and it’s developed into something I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I think a conversation between us could help shape it.” That’s an invitation, not a pitch.
You think about content like a music campaign. Can you explain that?
It’s just how my brain works, coming from managing musicians. The panel is the album title, your impact statement. But then you need a whole campaign around it.
A webinar with ten people only, a newsletter with 50 spots, a WhatsApp group where you drop insights every Tuesday. Every single channel is a different way of getting people deeper into the idea. It’s not about broadcasting, it’s about building a world that people want to come into.
Final thought for anyone heading to Cannes this year?
Success in networking is about invitation in, not promotion out. If you can make someone genuinely curious about something you’re building, and invite them to be part of figuring it out, no cold email or paid ad will ever come close to that.
To attend the Panel Power event on Wednesday 24 June, 10-11am at Maison NDA in Cannes, click here.
