Chief Strategy Officer at VML / AdAge Media Person of the Year / Cannes Juror / Clios Jury President / Effies Grand Juror
Recently I spoke with Ad Age about all the news, drama, and big takeaways from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. We all know the weeks after the Festival are the beginning of our New Year. Everyone’s fired up, talking about inspiration, determined to have brave conversations, motivated by being pissed off at not winning a Lion, pouring through copious trend wrap-ups, promising to do work that makes a difference. Then we bring on the ‘big idea’ meetings, the how we win action plans, the hack sessions, the unpack the work workshops. Now, I'm not mad about this. This is a very good thing. We all need this kick in the arse to power us forward BUT... I would stress one big thing as we take our New Year's vigor to the table. Let's save the business before trying to save the world. This year, we saw a healthy body of work awarded Lions that used the power of creativity to transform businesses - AND people's lives, communities, and maybe even the planet. Work where the purpose was real, demonstrated at scale, and delivered tangible outcomes for both business and cause. We finally, hopefully, have gotten over being completely drunk on ‘purpose', and awarding advertisers with Lions simply for paying lip service to causes and social well-being. Let's go make more of this work, please! Happy New Year.