“Merkron” will only bring Europe down The existential crisis in advertising

Investors are starting to buy into “the Macron-merkel reboot” of the eurozone, says Matthew Lynn. They should “ignore the hype”. Far from reforming the Continent, the “Merkron” axis “looks like doubling down on protectionism and socialism”: it will leave Europe worse off in the long run. Emmanuel Macron has talked about liberalising France’s labour market and making Paris more attractive to start-ups, yet he has already morphed “into a very traditional French protectionist”. He is pushing to give “strategic” EU industries protection from foreign takeovers, and has argued for a “buy European act”, ensuring that “state contracts are placed with local companies”. Outrageously, he is also backing restrictions on “posted workers”, mostly from Eastern Europe, who work in other states on agency contracts from their home nations – effectively clamping down on the free movement of labour. The eurozone economy is currently enjoying a cyclical bounce, largely because the European Central Bank has just chucked s2trn “of freshly minted money” at it. Let’s see what happens once that “sugar rush” has faded.

Beneath the glitter of Cannes Lions, “the advertising industry’s annual festival of self-congratulation”, there was a discernible sense of “mild panic”, says John Gapper. Put it down to the demise of the 30-second ad. Over the years, the format has paid for “a lot of the rented yachts and expensive parties at Cannes”, as well as burnishing the industry’s creative reputation. But the traditional ad is in trouble. “The narrative format crafted for breaks between TV shows does not translate online” – adding to the “wider crisis in online advertising” caused by “ill-suited ads appearing on low-quality sites, and irritated viewers skipping past them”. Although internet advertising overtook TV advertising in spend last year, most of it went into search marketing. Big display advertisers, such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, are still wedded to the dated TV format. “What will save advertising from chaos? In Cannes last week, it was easy to meet people asking the question and very difficult to find anyone with a convincing answer.” The 30-second ad was “a perfect invention for its time” – but creatives have yet to devise “a sturdy successor”.