Hasta La Creative!

Cannes, our chance to share, reward and celebrate, is the best reflection on the state of the advertising industry each year, and this week I predict it will reveal the level of chaos we all feel.

This year, advertisers will be rewarded in 17 categories, double the number of awards from just five years ago. Whether this reflects advertising as an increasingly wide discipline that requires ever more specific knowledge and skills, or whether it’s about mindlessly increasing revenue, I don’t care.

What I do care about is the meaninglessness of them all. This year I see the talk on the Croisette shifting for the first time from “There are too many awards” to “What the hell are these categories anyway?” We’ve gotten to a level of complexity so great that the Cannes organizers have a “Cannes Doctor” prominently featured on their website to help tell industry experts what sort of advertising they’ve made.

Continue reading at AdAge.com