The Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity this year is full of artificial-intelligence (AI) creatives looking to use the technology in marketing and advertising.
Key Details
- Creatives in communications, advertising, and related fields from around the world attend the Cannes Lions, held this year on the French Riviera.
- As the largest gathering of advertising and communication creatives in the industry, it is an ideal event to showcase new tools and technology.
- Already, AI has led to plenty of pre-event buzz, but now that the festival has begun, attendees are starting to get a glimpse at the world of possibilities that come from AI.
Why it’s news
As one of the largest global events for advertising and communications fields, the focus on AI indicated where the sector is headed and gives a glimpse at how it will embrace AI.
Musician and investor will.i.am praised AI as a “job creator” and warned that the talks about AI taking away jobs may be blown out of proportion.
“If you are a creator and you see this tool, then it’s a job creator,” the musician says. “If you are tied to yesterday and just comfortable with mediocrity, then it’s a job [destroyer].”
Smartly.io’s Chief Information Officer Oli Marlow-Thomas holds a similar position.
“Ready or not, a new era of creativity is upon us, and our industry will need to adapt,” he writes in The Drum. “We find ourselves at the center of a creative renaissance.”
Marlow-Thomas suggests that marketers have much to gain from AI usage and that it will catapult their industry to the next level.
“AI can assist marketers with automating repetitive tasks, generating creative content, and personalizing experiences. Specifically, generative AI can help marketers save time, improve efficiency, and increase engagement. What used to take weeks, can now take minutes,” he says.
While AI is dominating the conversation at Cannes Lions, last year’s hot topic is noticeably absent from the event—the metaverse. While the metaverse was a prominent discussion last year as marketers and advertisers looked for ways to enter the new marketing space, the metaverse is no longer the main focus for event attendees.
