Is it still worthwhile for advertising-related businesses to attend Cannes during the annual Festival of Creativity? Is it necessary to have your own base of operations in Cannes? Should you concentrate on staging your own activations or focus on attending events hosted by others?
These were among the questions posed to a panel of ad and media industry experts at New Digital Age’s most recent ‘Marketing the Marketers’ event in central London. NDA’s editor Justin Pearse hosted the discussion where he was joined by: Georgie Broadhead, Marketing Director, UK & Israel, Microsoft Advertising; Xhemile Poley, Head of Events at LG Ad Solutions; Omar Oakes, Editor-in -Chief of The Media Leader; and Andy Oakes, Co-founder and publisher of New Digital Age.
Omar Oakes opened the conversation by outlining the key reasons for continuing to have a presence in Cannes in 2025: “Once you become a brand of a certain size, you want to be seen on big public channels like TV and Out-of-Home. It communicates to your audience that you’re doing well, you’ve got a budget and you’re confident about your future in the marketplace. For those in the ad business, attendance at Cannes acts like a smaller version of that, particularly if your business has an international focus. You need to be seen to be open for business in Cannes.”
However, Poley of LG Ad Solutions believes the key to standing out at Cannes is focusing on making it your own and not trying to compete directly with the bigger brand activations in Cannes in order to make an impact: “We don’t try to keep up with the Spotifys of the world; that’s not why we are there. We are focused on our clients, what they need, creating an activation for them to experience our brand and what we need to do to cultivate those relationships.
“It really depends on your brand, who your clients are, and what you are trying to achieve.For us, it’s all about building a space where people get the opportunity to step into the LG universe and experience the brand and our team in a physical setting. Be sure to think about all the audiences that are on the ground at Cannes – for instance we open our space for journalists to come for a daily ‘happy hour’ and experience our brand while giving them a space to relax and get some work done.”
Andy Oakes agreed that having your own base in Cannes is beneficial in many ways: “If you are running up and down the Croisette and turning up sweating to every meeting, it’s not a great look. It turns out that the Croisette is so much longer than you think! Having your own venue, particularly one with air conditioning, means that people mostly come to you.”
ROI vs. Serendipity
Andy Oakes also noted a general shift in tone surrounding Cannes in the post-Covid years. He said: “The industry has moved on and grown up a bit. There’s a much greater demand on people to pack their diary with meetings and demonstrate some sort of ROI for being there.”
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Broadhead believes that determining the ROI on attendance at Cannes can be “pretty impossible” in reality.
“I’ve used internal surveys in the past. I’ve literally stood over people’s desks and said, please complete this if you want us to keep doing events. We’ve got to be able to go back to the finance team and to our CMO and point to some positive outcomes. In many cases, it’s the connections that are made in Cannes that are the main source of ROI, but that kind of thing usually takes time to bear fruit, so it can be a challenge for marketers to make a strong case for attendance at any given event.”
Omar Oakes argued that organising back-to-back meetings for yourself while in Cannes risks missing the point of being there: “I think that serendipity is a huge part of Cannes and if you don’t buffer in time to your calendar for those happenstance meetings, it’s a big mistake.
“Yes, it’s a pain to trail up and down the Croisette, but you bump into a hell of a lot of people, and those conversations you never expected are often where the magic happens. Leave trying to quantify ROI until you have the follow-up meetings back in London or wherever.”
Broadhead agreed that in reality it can be difficult to strike a balance with your time in Cannes: “You’ve got to be selfish and get out there to learn about what other marketers are doing. It takes a bit of a mindshift to think, OK, I might be going to an event, but it’s still work – and, potentially, really valuable work.”
Planning for success
In terms of when to start planning your presence in Cannes, our panel is in agreement that it’s never too early to start – indeed, for 2025, it may already be too late!
“The good space has probably already gone,” said Andy Oakes. “We work with someone on the ground in Cannes and they tell us that, due to the building work going on around the Palais, there’s roughly 30% less accommodation available for in 2025. Hire a yacht? Not likely. They were all booked two years ago and they’re currently in the process of shortening the harbour.”
However, said Omar Oakes, it is still possible for an emerging brand to do Cannes on a budget: “Think about who you could possibly collaborate with. Do you need to have a big activation space, or do you actually just need to have a targeted list of prospects? You can still hire a decent-sized hotel room that’s not mind-blowingly expensive and get a couple of dozen people in there.”
Poley added: “Know your audience, know your goals. What are you trying to achieve? I see other brands doing things that I know won’t resonate with our clients. Focus on what’s unique about your brand, be strategic, be creative. A tight budget can sometimes be a good thing in that it helps you to think outside the box a little bit more.”
