Advertising Age reported on the increased registration-only events at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which especially frustrated newer attendees denied access beyond velvet ropes.
Um, Cannes has always embraced exclusivity—marginalizing people based on status at White advertising agencies, country of origin, gender, sexual identity, race and ethnicity, etc.
Hell, even the Omnicom Inclusion Breakfast was an exclusive affair.
As for registration-only issues, don’t forget the initiatives to ban registered sex offenders.
Registration-only events make Cannes feel less democratic and overly programmed
By E.J. Schultz, Ewan Larkin, and Brian Bonilla
To thrive at Cannes this year, you needed two things: a fan and your name on countless registration lists. It was the hottest Cannes in memory and also perhaps the most exclusive one.
While the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has seen a steady rise in roped-off events, this year it seemed to reach a tipping point. The beach and harbor were again dominated by activations that required registration, including Stagwell’s Sport Beach, Amazon Port, Spotify Beach and others. This year, there was a noticeable encroachment inland, with multiple cafes overtaken by vendors and agencies, which used them to conduct invite-only programming or hold client meetings, effectively shutting them off from average festival-goers.
One big change from last year: Caffe Roma, a normally welcoming spot in the shadow of the Palais, was overtaken by Creative Artists Agency, where people guarding the entrance turned away anyone not on the list.
“People without a pay-to-play space are having to get real inventive about where to eat and meet this year, given the sprawling nature of branded spaces—they’ve exploded,” said Oliver McAteer, head of development and partner at Mischief @ No Fixed Address. “It feels like no inch of Cannes has been left untouched. Quiet restaurants you could sneak away to and take a meeting or grab a rare bite are now an AI firm you’ve never heard of. AI is likely the reason I am sunburned.”
The situation added more fire to the long-running debate over whether Cannes Lions has lost its appeal as a community gathering for creatives of all stripes, especially those without industry connections.
Take it from Fernando Machado, the chief brand officer of Chipotle, who has been coming to Cannes since he was a rising marketer at Unilever. “It was just the Palais,” he said in an interview this week, referring to the festival’s traditional home venue. “I would buy two cereal bars, two Gatorades” and “be there for the day.” He referred to this year’s festival as being filled with RSVP lists and Cannes “bouncers.”
“It makes it less democratic, right?” Machado said. “I’ve been in the industry for long now, and I know a lot of people, so I think it’s easy for me to get in.” But Fernando from 15 years ago would likely be shut out, he added.
Leeann Leahy, CEO of The Via Agency, shared a similar perspective. “It feels more like a ‘No, you can’t’ festival with all of its closed doors and over-programmed venues. And I have always loved the discovery of this festival,” Leahy said, noting that it took her “an hour to find a cafe that wasn’t taken over by some brand somewhere.”
Frances Webster, CEO of Walrus, said she had to take a breakfast meeting at the Gutter Bar, which is typically popular for late-night drinks, because so many Cannes restaurants were rented out this year.
WPP’s VML took over Beryte, a Lebanese restaurant, while tech brand InMobi took over another eatery to promote Glance, an intelligent shopping agent.
There was also some disgruntlement about the Carlton Hotel, which often serves as a watering hole for delegates beginning at night and extending into the early hours of the morning. Attendees reported being turned away by security unless they were meeting with somebody already inside, and voiced complaints about the hotel charging $100 per person to sit at a table. Tom Morrissy, chief growth officer of independent media agency Noble People, said such tactics hurt “the history and spirit of the festival.”
How the scorching heat affected Cannes
Of course, with scorching temperatures, drinking late into the night was not always the best idea. A historic heat wave gripped France for most of the week. The most common sight on the Croisette: People draped in event lanyards and wristbands holding fans. Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, summed it up quite nicely at a panel on WPP’s rooftop near the end of the week, suggesting her Oura ring “thinks I’m dead.”
The heatwave “made every indoor session a refuge and outdoor activations a genuine endurance test,” Lindsay Slaby, founder of marketing consultancy Sunday Dinner, wrote in her Cannes recap for clients. She noted that it “probably contributed to the intimacy premium: small dinners, air-conditioned villas, the sessions with 21 people at the art hotel beat everything happening at Croisette scale.”
She also observed that the “old Cannes energy was genuinely porous,” referring to past festivals of “creative directors running into clients at the Gutter Bar at 2 a.m.,” and “serendipitous collisions that turned into briefs.”
The corporate sprawl beyond the Palais is a physical manifestation of how Cannes continues to evolve into a business conference as much as it is a creativity festival. Ad tech players, who began descending on Cannes years ago, are now joined by a growing number of consultancies. Boston Consulting Group upped its Cannes presence starting about four years ago and this year ran its BCG House along the Croisette, with programming on topics such as organizational transformation and the path from CMO to CEO.
“Marketing is one of our biggest topics for us commercially,” said Jessica Apotheker, BCG’s CMO, managing director and senior partner. “It’s just a great opportunity to engage with marketing leaders. We will share some more thought leadership, connect with the right people, and also connect with the technical system.”
Cannes Lions itself is leaning into executive involvement. For the second year in a row, it hosted a Global CEO Forum. This year, the closed-door session at the Carlton ran on the festival’s opening day and was “strictly limited to 50 personally invited global CEOs,” according to its website, with McKinsey listed as a “lead insight partner.”
Still, there does appear to be a concerted effort to preserve the festival’s original creative spirit. Ciaran McCarthy, VP of brand and global advertising at Microsoft, told Ad Age on Monday that his whole team was in the South of France this week, spending lots of time walking the work and attending award shows.
“I hope others are doing the same,” McCarthy said. “It’d be a shame to come here and not.”
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