Cannes Lions: Iggy Pop, Keith Weed and culture

Cannes for me this year felt quite different.  The week certainly started out a lot quieter than usual, though whether this was down to fears over terrorism, financial restraints or a questioning of the festival’s relevance it was difficult to say.  Whatever the reasons, I’d say ‘subdued’ was the prevailing mood until at least Wednesday, when perhaps the advertising and marketing community’s natural optimism resurfaced only to be brought crashing down again on post Brexit Friday.  Small wonder I’m struggling to capture how I feel about this year’s event!

More specifically, I was happy to be involved in The Advertising Association’s speaker lounge debate entitled ‘Values v Valuations’ as a kick off.  Held in conjunction with The Guardian’s US CEO, Eamonn Store it was a useful prompt as to why more meetings didn’t start with the ‘What do you really stand for?’ question and sparked a lot of debate about whether ‘values driven’ businesses could ever be commercially successful outside of a few poster child brands.  Perhaps not surprisingly the concensus view was that it’s only those businesses driven by strong purpose and values that will survive and prosper in the long term.

I avoided most of the ‘agency brings celeb along’ talks this year with the glorious exception of Grey’s session with Iggy Pop.  The ever young iconoclast was remarkably mellow and funny whilst acknowledging that it was only impending death and poverty that had curbed the worst of his excesses in his early years.  If there was any marketing message to be had here it was certainly one of being true to your own values and maintaining relentless tenacity in the face of adversity.  As one quote summarised, ‘The stages keep getting higher but I keep jumping off them!’   

Perhaps the most relevant talk I went to was from Unilever’s Keith Weed who never fails to fill the main Lumiere theatre.  He unveiled internal Unilever research analysing 1,000 ads from different countries and found 50% contained stereotypical portrayals of women. Just 1% conveyed women as funny, 2% showed them as intelligent, and 3% showed them as leaders. The research examined Unilever's own advertising output, split into "progressive" and "normative" and found that the more progressive ads resonated better with audiences. According to Weed, the ads had 12% greater impact, in terms of consumers actively enjoying and feeling involved with the ads. "These are all big swings," he said. "This is not a moral issue, it's an economic issue. We will create better advertising if we create advertising that is more progressive and start challenging those stereotypes. We want to move to women who are full, authentic and have an aspirational achieving focus." 

Unilever will also challenge "vacuous, blank, agreeable and thin" personality stereotypes, instead moving to three-dimensional portrayals of women.  It was only slightly incongruous to then be shown a Magnum ‘Unleash the beast’ ad featuring, I have to say, a series of extraordinarily beautiful women and men eyeing each other up whilst walking their tigers and leopards.  At least, however, Unilever are prepared to stand up and be counted on this issue and accept that even they don’t always get these things perfect.

All in all, Cannes has got me thinking about culture and agency working cultures most of all. With so many unsavoury issues hanging over the advertising and media industry (bullying and harassment lawsuits amongst the major groups, the US ANA report on unspecified media kick-backs etc) it seems to me that a strong, transparent and fair working culture is more important than ever.  Without it we are all in danger of losing our last chance to build real trust between advertisers and agencies and more importantly brands and their consumers.