Paul Coxhill on Running Cannes Lions, the Return of Brand, and AI’s Creative Limits

Speaker A: We have incredible people and incredible teams who have done this many times before. We have an operations team who put on Cannes Lions, but they also put on other events in the Informa portfolio. The festivals team, that's the operational delivery team behind this. And they, as you would expect, have incredibly detailed plans. We work really closely with the city, so we have a permanent presence in Cannes.

Speaker B: Hello, everyone. We're back to the Shift Code, our podcast dedicated to transformation, leadership, innovation. And today we're in Cannes at the Cannes Alliance. I'm really delighted to host Paul Coxhill. He's the chief operating officer of all of this. Of Lions.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, Paul, why don't we start first? Like, tell us a little bit about Lions. What is that? Like, I know Informa, right? That's this massive events company. Is Lions a part of that? Like, how does it work?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So, uh, great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Lions is part of Informa, but we joined informa about 18 months ago, so relatively recently. We used to be part of a business called Essential, which Informa acquired. And we sit in a part of Informa called Informa Festivals. So this is the home of you're here now in this amazing festival. And we run a bunch of other festivals that sit in that division. Newly created when we joined, but Informa is a huge B2B events business. Biggest B2B events business in the world. Maybe we'll touch on that later. So Lions as a business, uh, the biggest part of it is Cannes Lions, where we are this week. But we also have a number of other brands in the Lions business. That's Effie, which is the global benchmark of effectiveness.

Speaker B: Uh, walk contagious listeners to understand for marketing effectiveness.

Speaker A: Marketing effectiveness.

Speaker B: Advertising effectiveness. Marketing effectiveness, yeah.

Speaker A: Not all types of effectiveness. So we've got a learning business, an advisory business, a, uh, digital subscriptions business, and then an events business. And the biggest part of the events business is Cannes.

Speaker B: So let's talk about this Cannes Lions thing. If you've never been here, you probably would be very surprised what it looks like. It's crazy. Enormous brands rent entire parts of the beach for millions of dollars. How many people come every year we

Speaker A: have in the city, there will be well over 20,000 people who are, uh, in some way connected to the festival. Around, uh, somewhere around 15,000 of those are kind of officially part of either speaking or coming in as a delegate or some other association with the Palais, where everywhere you go in Cannes during this week, you will bump into people from across the world. Of advertising and marketing. The festival has been around for 73 years. Started as an award show purely for advertising.

Speaker B: Right. So the replica of the film festival, but for advertising.

Speaker A: That's right. It spun out of the film festival, actually, originally.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think the first time I came was about 30 years ago.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And it was still like very much, uh, an award festival.

Speaker A: You go to the awards every night and then it's a packed house. And that's still the heart and soul of the festival is the awards. Um, so Tonight there'll be 2,000 people in the auditorium looking at the winners and celebrating. But we also now broadcast the awards on the big screen. So we have watch parties in the city as well. And we broadcast it online, um, through our streaming pass. So the awards is the heart heartbeat of the event. That's the celebration of creativity and great creative work. And you know, can wouldn't be what it is without that. So that's fundamentally important. But around that, um, the creatives were the people who were coming 30 years ago and they still are. But now we've also got the brands, we've got media platforms. Of course, as soon as CMOS M started coming, then media and tech people started coming. Um, We've now got CEOs here. We run a CEO forum here every. On the Monday, every year now. And so the ecosystem around marketing, as that's grown then the festival has grown with it.

Speaker B: That's fantastic. So let me ask you first a question about almost project management. Right? So to organize something as big and you say a global audience, but I would assume people coming from the US is a majority here.

Speaker A: That's a large number from the US everywhere.

Speaker B: And the big spenders are. They used to be old brands and then we had all the tech companies and all the AI companies. So like a lot of US companies as well. How do you pull off an event like that in terms of project management?

Speaker A: First of all, it's talent, right? So we have incredible people and incredible teams who have done this many times before. Um, the way the model works at a kind of structural level is we have an operations team who put on Cannes Lions, but they also put on other events in the Informa portfolio. So a festivals team, that's the operational delivery team behind this. And they, as you would expect, have incredibly detailed plans. We work really closely with the city, so we have a permanent presence in Cannes. We have a team that's based here all year round, uh, who work with the mayor's office, work with the city, the state, because they're all stakeholders, right? Yeah, absolutely. So you know, when you're doing something as big as this, it's a government level conversation and security and everything associated with putting this on. So that's really important. So we have dedicated people here, dedicated, uh, operations team and then a commercial team that liaises with all of the people who are activating here, as you say, from the U.S. but also we've got activations from China, from Japan and from across the rest of the world as well. So yeah, really talented team, incredibly detailed process. Obviously we've been doing it for 70 odd years so we've got a method, um, a way of delivering it and we learn every year we're doing new things every year so we have to then resource accordingly to make sure we deliver those effectively. Uh, the most important thing for us though from a project perspective is having a, uh, talented group of people who know what they're doing.

Speaker B: And so do you do this like a structured project like we teach at PMI or profits? Do you have like a risk management strategy? Do you have a stakeholder mapping exercise? Do you have a project charter like every year that you renew? How does it work?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean we have a process, um, of course. So one of the things that we do here is obviously every year we set KPIs for what we want to achieve in the next cycle. So whilst our financial year is a calendar year, uh, the event cycle obviously is June to July or July to June I should say. Ah. So uh, each year we're setting the KPIs based on what we learned from the previous year. And we have obviously revenue related and profit related and cost related KPIs, but also uh, customer KPIs, NPS and also getting feedback from customers on their ROI as well, uh, to make sure that that's part of our roi. So we set those and then we have a review process, post each event which will start literally on Monday. In fact some of it started already to gather all the feedback, evaluate what worked, look at what we can improve. We do that throughout July and August and then in September we're really then saying, okay, what are we going to commit to doing next year? And that's where we may say, okay, let's not do this, let's introduce something new and then we build a project charter around that and a project plan around that. Look at what resources we need. Do we need more in some less than others.

Speaker B: Do you have multiple vendors? I would assume?

Speaker A: Yeah, we have lots of partners. As you'd expect. Um, but you know, Informa brings with it a lot of capability in house.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah. So one small example of that is Informa has an app that's uh, called ConnectMe, which, which they use across lots of events. So we are now using that app here, whereas previously that was outsourced. So you know there are lots of that. We, we work with lots and lots of production partners, but at the same time we're also doing quite a lot of stuff in house. Given the scale of the Informer organization,

Speaker B: how big is um, the Canal Alliance? Like, how do you define, like when people buy a yacht here or rent a yacht for the, for the week for their client events, is that part of your revenue or.

Speaker A: It varies. I mean if you're uh, Yacht Row, which is in the harbour, so that's where yachts are moored up all week and they have activations on them. That's uh, a, that's part of the official festival. So you can buy a yacht pass to, then go and check out Yacht Row. There's a lot of ad, uh, tech and martech and research platforms down there. And then the spaces we're in, the cabana spaces are similar to that. So that, that's very much part of the festival. If someone's just literally sailing into the harbor and hosting a party, uh, that's not part of the festival, but we encourage them to work with us. If they're running content, for example, they may become an affiliate partner which then means that we publicize their content. It also means that we make sure that their content isn't clashing with content that's similar that we've got running at the same time so that everyone maximizes their audience. So they won't be renting the yacht from us, but they may become an affiliate partner so they get access to the wider network.

Speaker B: And what about all these people who privatize can the city? Right. Restaurants are rebranded, beaches are all rebranded. Is that revenue that goes to you or.

Speaker A: It varies. So we have a number of different models depending on the partner and also depending on the history of the relationship. There are some organizations who've been renting certain spaces directly with the hotels for many, many, many years. So we don't uh, get involved in that. And they have long standing relationships. Again, they may become an affiliate partner so that any content they're putting on their beach activation then is coordinated with us and we can make sure that we get one joined up experience and our delegates can access what they're putting on. So that's one model is affiliate. Another model is where we will effectively buy the space, whether it's a restaurant or some other space, and then we will sell that onto a partner. And again, the benefit that the partner gets is that we will publicize the event. We will make sure we are helping in the execution. Uh, from a quality bar perspective, we're applying our safety standards. It's part of the security protocols. Um, and also, again, we're coordinating, for example, someone's having a private client dinner, they don't want that to be happening at the same time that there's a big music event happening next door. So we can help manage that experience.

Speaker B: Right, so how does it work in the end when you talk to your government stakeholders? Because you're creating a sort of ecosystem of which part, some of which you don't really control. Right. It's like it's developing almost organically around you, but you're still kind of responsible or accountable for the whole thing. Right. So how does it work?

Speaker A: Well, I think you used, uh, the phrase earlier stakeholder mapping for us because we've been doing this for many, many years. We know who the stakeholders are that, uh, we need to deal with. There are some things that are decided, ah, at a city level, some things at a state level, some things at a national level. Uh, so we need to make sure that we understand who all those stakeholders are and have a really clear plan of who's going to engage with whom and not just leave it to the one week a year while we're here or the two weeks while we're building and taking down. But we have those relationships all year. So hence having the team here in the city who are constantly talking to stakeholders, the hotels, the taxi companies, the government, um, security, the gendarmerie, to make sure that we are completely even.

Speaker B: The airport. Right. Because I guess it creates a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We can't control everything, but we can at least ensure we understand who the stakeholders are. And if something happens that's not directly in our purview, that we know who to engage with. But we have introduced things like Caroline's career, um, Centre Care Points with a partner around the city, um, which is in direct response to feedback that if, uh, somebody needed to report an incident or just needed some time out to feel safe, then even if it's outside the perimeter of what we're doing, they're at Cannes Lions, so they expect us to help. So we've introduced care points around the city with that in mind. So to your Point, we take that responsibility very seriously.

Speaker B: How do you think about sustainability objectives? And second, uh, do you in the end measure the population's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the event? So basically inhabitants, people who live in Canada.

Speaker A: Interesting question. Uh, I'll answer the second one first because we don't, we don't directly measure it. However, um, as part of our post event review with the city and the government, we get feedback directly from them about the impact on the community, the town, the residents. So if there's anything that comes out of that that we need to take action on, then that's the mechanism, the route that we would choose to do it. Sustainability, Yes, I mean Informa, as you would expect, has a really clear sustainability. Obviously there's a sustainability team central in Informa, um, that we work with and we've got a couple of that team on site here to make sure we're being mindful of everything that we're doing from what kind of merch gets produced to uh, how we actually take down minimizing waste, all of those things from an industry perspective. We also have the Lions Impact Hub, um, in the Palais, which is a center for sustainability and the creativity around sustainability. Um, and we did a, an official open house for two hours on Wednesday where everyone, whether they've got a delegate pass or not, is invited into that hub, um, with, and again with partners like Act Responsible, the UN and various others, um, they're involved in that to really champion sustainability and broader impact initiatives at DEI for the industry as a whole. So we take that very seriously.

Speaker B: So for instance, the cabanas, the massive installations that we see on the beach, what happens to them?

Speaker A: Well, the cabanas, so we're sitting in one now. We try and as, as much as we can. This is in the perimeter, so as much as we can, we are, uh, we responsibly recycle the materials. Uh, you know, you can't always do that with everything but we're, you know, we take that very seriously. Across the rest of the city, a lot of the beach activations, we're not directly involved in the build, but again we work with our partners to make sure that they're taking their responsibilities very seriously.

Speaker B: We give them guidelines.

Speaker A: You, we, yeah, we work with, there's, there's actually a, you know, a relatively small number of big production companies that can pull off or something like this. So we know who all of them are. We've got a gathering with them actually later today. So yeah, so we work very closely with them.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Let's talk a bit about the content now. What are you hearing this year that is a little different than last year? Because last year was all about AI. Uh, the year before all about AI. Uh, this year sounds like all about AI. So what is a little different?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean AI of course is a big topic. It's such a transformational technology. Uh, but I think what's different this year is that you're seeing a few things. One is AI is now being used and has now been used in practice for much longer. And so as a result of that, you're seeing real examples of AI, but also hearing more stories about the limitations of AI and the role of humanity in AI. So one of the things I've been struck by when I was catching up with our content team earlier today on this is that there's a much more of a dialogue about human and AI working together this year. Um, and then linked to that the role of brand in the world of AI. So the irony is that although AI is part of the digital ecosystem which has tended to push towards performance marketing, actually in the discoverability era of AI, where you need to be on the list in a geo world, the role of brand is actually really important to get on that list. Um, you know, whether that's a Reddit page reference or whether that's Wikipedia or something else, the uh, AI engines are using those, those tools to identify who are the key players in a category based on a question that gets asked

Speaker B: in this situation here. What you're saying is interesting is yes, we're spending a lot of time in activation marketing. So basically stuff that you can measure right away, what is the effect, you get clicks, you get visits to your site, you get conversion, but there's still a big amount of money that should be spent on building your brand equity. So your long term brand, how much that is of the total depends on your business. Some people say one third. Whatever it is, it's a lot of money. And what you're saying is because now, uh, the LLMs are actually controlling almost the equity of each brand, you have to spend a lot of money trying to influence them.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean in some cases you don't have to spend a lot of money, but you need to have a really, really clear position on your brand. So I the interesting irony we're starting to pick up this year is that the role of classic brand marketing, having a clear value proposition, being really closely linked to what your customers are after, producing great content that reinforces that proposition. Those are all things that help geodiscovery and put your brand on the map. I think that's actually a really positive thing because that talks about the balance between performance and brand. We've advocated for many years it's about both. It's not one or the other and each is a multiplier effect of the other. Um, so you need to do both. And actually I think AI seems to be early signs. But there's a conversation this week definitely around brand, uh, returning and being really important.

Speaker B: That's interesting. You speak sometimes about creativity being a driver of business value and of course you know it's what you're doing but still it's a very important, I think it's an opinion that many people would share. However, it's not that easy to measure the impact of creativity on um, business value. So other are there ways to do that? Like uh, how can we, how can you convince the CFO that those marketing dollars that are being spent building brand will create business value?

Speaker A: So we first of all have done quite a lot of thought leadership work around this because Obviously we've got 70 years of great creative campaigns and we've also now with Effies being in the family, got um, 50 years of effectiveness campaigns with results attached to them. And so what we did with Interbrand recently was uh, a study which was actually mainly focused on the Cannes Lions Awards. And Interbrand independently, uh, analyzed 50 separate brands that had entered into Cannes and looked at the impact of if they had won a lion, what was the consequent impact on share price, uh, and on Ebit and obviously win a lion and that drives share price growth necessarily. But looking at are these organizations typically when they're rewarded for creativity driving better business outcomes and they saw an uplift over, I think it was 2.7% on average versus the norm on EBIT and 4.7% on CAP. So an aggregate level and that's one exit. PwC have done a similar study. There's aggregate level impact from creativity when you go to the individual level, which is more where you're coming at, it goes back to having a really, really clear system and framework around KPIs. You might be creatively lucky once if you haven't got a system, um, but you're not going to be repeatedly creatively lucky unless you put systems, processes, cultures in place to deliver that outcome repeatedly.

Speaker B: So what kind of um, systems do you implement?

Speaker A: So probably the best example of that is AB InBev, um, who've won Creative Company of the Year three times and they won the inaugural Creative brand line this year, which is a new line that we've introduced to celebrate those organizations that invest in systems, processes and cultures, the inputs as opposed to the outputs. So that award isn't about campaigns, that's about the organizational structure and um, ways of working. So what AB have done is they've got a central marketing capabilities team, um, they've created effectively a ladder, um, that uh, evaluates their creative outcomes. They've trained their entire organization around the world, every brand on that and they repeat that training regularly.

Speaker B: That's interesting. Right? Because ABI in its genes was not really a creative type of, uh, CPG company.

Speaker A: No, they've been on a journey.

Speaker B: They're very focused on finance and manufacturing and built that way through acquisitions. It's great to see that they've been able to repeatedly now win awards.

Speaker A: Repeatedly win awards. But most importantly, and Marcel, their CMO was m on stage this week. Um, most importantly, that's showing up in their results. Um, so that he wouldn't keep investing in it and he wouldn't have the money to keep investing it if it wasn't delivering business outcomes. So we are really trying here now to recognize those organizations that are investing in consistent delivery of outcomes over time through the way they've structured themselves, the way they've KPI'd themselves and the cultures they've introduced.

Speaker B: Yeah. So how, um, do you see this apparent contradiction between, let's say, project management and creativity? Because we are here at PMI in Cannes because we're training generations of creative employees, not necessarily the creative people themselves, but employees of creative companies with structure and how to get things done and how, uh, to be organized. Of course, many of them are almost in the tech industry more than the creative industry. But still, what do you think project management can bring to creative industries?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I would actually, again, going back to what I said just now, I think consistent creativity over time needs great project management. Right. You know, you may wander around a park and have one great creative idea without project management. But if you are, um, making sure that your organization is set up for creativity, that requires project management, it requires project discipline, um, because you have to make sure that you're going to get the outcomes that you want consistently over time. So it may not be the individual creative who's doing the project management work, it may be a team around them, but that discipline is absolutely required. So I think one, one works well for the other.

Speaker B: Do you think that creativity has a future outside of AI agents being creative for us, or are we managing those Agents to have the ideas for us now at this point.

Speaker A: I think at this point it was interesting. I don't know if you caught any of demis from Google, DeepMind's talk. And he was on stage actually with, uh, A24, the film company, because DeepMind and A24 have put together a collaboration, create movies, ah, using AI and human creativity. And that was the really important bit because he was saying, despite being one of the world's leading AI gurus, that human creative component is absolutely critical to produce great work. I genuinely believe that the HE and other AI organizations, and we talk to many of them, believe that it's the combination of human creativity and AI that is going to be the unlock, not one replacing the other at this stage. I think we've not seen AI quite yet get to the capability of creating original ideas. I think we've seen AI creating ideas based on other material, not necessarily original ideas. We couldn't rule out that that may happen in the future. But even then you still need taste. And I think the human eye on. Is that a tasteful idea? Is it an impactful idea is still going to be critical to scale.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're back to taste, judgment, discernment, accountability.

Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker B: This is what you think, think humans will keep?

Speaker A: Yeah, And I'm sure AI, I mean, we'd be naive not to assume that AI isn't going to constantly evolve and improve. But I think the risk with AI becoming ubiquitous is everyone just ends up producing the same outcomes and the same outputs. And I think that's where the humanity comes in to say, well, how do I make that different to what everyone else is doing? And the human guardrails around that, I think are going to be fundamental. So, no, we passionately believe it will be a combination of both. We should embrace AI, but we still need the human to steer and guide and drive directly.

Speaker B: I have two last questions for you. The first one is, what is the advice you would give any business right now that feels they might be massively disrupted by what's going on, Especially AI, of course.

Speaker A: I think it's really important for any business to stay true to the business strategy and mission? Um, I think when you see businesses fail, it's because they respond to technology by revisiting their mission and changing it and going in a completely different direction. I think the best advice is to stay true to your mission. Your execution may change, but your mission should remain the same. And don't try to pivot away and become something that you weren't. Um, because too Often that's where businesses fail.

Speaker B: I'm going to send you our manifesto for enterprise agility. It's a lot about that. How do you react or proactively adapt to change, but at the same time keep coherence 100%.

Speaker A: Please do say that. Yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker B: And my last question is, what is the piece of advice you would give to anyone who is a knowledge worker? Should we be scared? What kind of actions should we take to, to future proof ourselves in this world?

Speaker A: Yeah, and look, I mean I've got teenage kids who are going to be in the job market very soon. So I think, you know, it's something that you do pick up a lot of concern about what jobs are going to be there for me when I land in a couple of years time. And I think the best advice I can give is to lean in, don't lean out. So I think, you know, the folks who try and ignore what's going on around them, AI being the example and not utilizing those technologies and capabilities, they will be the people who uh, get frustrated and maybe lose out. I think those who lean in use these tools and use them to enhance and embrace entrepreneurialism. I think we will see a new wave of new businesses emerging through that combination of human and AI. And so lean in and develop the skills, use AI, uh, to help you do your job and drive your career even more effectively.

Speaker B: Thank you. Paul, great to see you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you.