Toxic content clouds over Cannes
Ad industry has its annual party
Facebook Inc. and Google have come to dominate the beach front at the advertising industry’s biggest annual gathering in Cannes on the French Riviera, a sign of their ever-growing power in the world of marketing. This year, they face their toughest scrutiny yet.
The tech giants have pulled billions of ad dollars away from traditional media. Now a proliferation of objectionable content on their sites threatens to taint the global brands that advertise there. So expect marketing managers to put Silicon Valley executives on the spot at Cannes Lions, a week of events, meetings, speeches and parties by the Mediterranean.
The event starting Monday is the ad industry’s Oscars.
Here’s more of what to expect in Cannes: Tech Giants Under Scrutiny Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Google executive Matt Brittin and YouTube’s vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa Cecile Frot-Coutaz are due to speak. Marketing managers want to know what they’re doing about their brands showing up alongside fake news, a livestreamed shooting massacre on Facebook, images of self-harm on Instagram and pedophile commentary on YouTube. Climate Change How does an industry whose job is to propel global consumption respond to panic over climate change and environmental destruction? The question is now unavoidable in light of the Extinction Rebellion movement, the international fame of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and the Netflix documentary series Our Planet.
“It’s moved from being a zealot’s concern to absolutely mainstream,” said Mark Lund, U.K. Group CEO of McCann Worldgroup, a creative agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Cos. “Brands would be stupid if they didn’t have some view on what it meant for them and their role in ameliorating the problem.” Creativity and Data Cannes Lions started as a “festival of creativity” for people who make ads to share ideas and admire each other’s work. It’s morphed into a global event attended by over 10,000 people involved in every aspect of marketing. This year’s event seeks to bridge the creative and tech worlds to improve collaboration. It includes master classes from the likes of Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Inc. on how to use their data tools.