Welcome to Day Four of Ad Age’s Cannes Today newsletter. For real-time updates, follow our live blog. See all our coverage here.
The finish line is near. Undoubtedly, plenty of festival-goers are already headed to the airport, and those still in Cannes might be running out of small talk. Below, some conversation starters on some of the festival’s biggest happenings.
Girl power
Among the year’s biggest marketing stories is the rise of women’s sports—and the desire of brands to be part of the action. The trend is proving to be a major Cannes storyline, too. “You can see all over Cannes the things that are really winning are sports-related, and it’s women’s sports this time,” Goodby Silverstein & Partners Chief Creative Officer Margaret Johnson told Ad Age in this video interview. One of the most heralded campaigns is “WoMen’s Football,” which promotes gender equality in soccer, for instance.
And one of the biggest Cannes stars is Flau’Jae Johnson, the LSU basketball player and rapper. During an interview with Axios at the Women’s Sports House, she talked about her shoe deal with Puma and a record deal with Roc Nation that gave her creative control “so I could be my own boss,” she said. Johnson also spoke at a Tuesday panel on “The Rise of Women’s Sports” and even found time to show off her musical skills at a nightime Cannes performance.
How AI showed up
When festival-goers were not chatting about sports, they were talking about AI—including Elon Musk. TikTok, Amazon Ads and Pinterest were among the platforms rolling out AI news in France this week. Ad Age’s Asa Hiken summarized the offerings while looking at five ways the tech showed up at the Croisette, including an appearance by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer. AI was also involved in several Grand Prix-winning campaigns, notes Hiken, including “Handshake Hunt” and “WoMen’s Football.” But in the Entertainment category, AI was still MIA, according to jury leader Geoff Edwards, managing director of creative at Gale, who notes that “AI showed up in its purest form as a technology tool, as well as a way to enable entertainment experiences. But it didn’t dominate the Entertainment category in creative ways.” Read more of his Cannes jury takeaways here.
The creepiest way AI showed up at Cannes might be “Sir Martian Sorrell,” an AI robot from Media.Monks that talks to people and uses a small camera to draw a portrait of the person.
The creator crush
While Cannes happenings do sometimes draw attention outside the ad world—mostly when pop stars show up—the event tends to be pretty insular. But the festival this year is getting a bit more awareness outside the marketing bubble thanks to influencers. Creators including Alix Earle, Harry Jowsey, Jackie Aina and Tefi Pessoa are pumping out Cannes-centric social content, raising curiosity from their many followers about what is happening in Cannes, reports Ad Age’s Gillian Follett, who also documented the rise in influencer agencies coming to the festival.
Data, data, data
Plenty of media players made the trip to Cannes—including Netflix, NBCUniversal and Disney—and most of them wanted to talk about data partnerships rather than measurement, which had been a hot Cannes topic in the past. Ad Age’s Parker Herren summarizes some of the deals here, including a Disney partnership with Affinity Solutions allowing advertisers to plan and activate campaigns using data from 140 million debit and credit card transactions.
And the winners are …
See every Grand Prix awarded so far at our trophy hub. And for the agency scorecard, check out our running tally of U.S. winners. (Spoiler: Ogilvy is doing well.) For a video review of Wednesday’s winners, check this out.
Below, all the Grand Prix winners announced Thursday:
Klick Health wins Innovation Grand Prix for app that detects Type 2 diabetes via voice recordings
Renault’s ‘Cars to Work’ from Publicis Conseil wins creative commerce Grand Prix
Philips’ refurbished products campaign from LePub wins Creative Business Transformation Grand Prix
Pop-Tarts’ edible mascot from Weber Shandwick wins Brand Experience & Activation Grand Prix
Heinz campaigns from Rethink Toronto win Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix
Loewe’s collaboration with Japanese ceramic studio Suna Fujita wins Luxury & Lifestyle Grand Prix
A video about the risks of intimate photo sharing wins Creative Strategy Grand Prix
Swiftless
Rumors that Taylor Swift might go to Cannes turned out to be nothing more than rumors. Boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason spoke at Sport Beach today. But Swift, who is set to perform in London tomorrow, did not make the trip, reports Elle, which also cited a social post from marketing exec Caroline McCarthy, who stated that “Travis was told explicitly not to bring her because the security needs would overwhelm the city.” Jake from State Farm did make an appearance, via video, to introduce the Kelce bros.
Quotable
“Are you fed up with the endless Cannes humble brag posts?”—Jeremy Schumann, a marketer at Prime Video, on X promoting “Cans Lions,” an event set for tonight in Redondo Beach, California, that involves “Basically just cool marketers drinking CANS and talking shop on a yacht in SoCal. “
