Cannes Lions has this year seen more content than ever based around the intersection of creativity and technology – reflecting what's happening at the coalface. It was most prominently marked by the launch of the Lions Innovations Festival, a standalone, two-day conference dedicated to celebrating and exploring the intersection of creativity, data and technology in recognition that the advertising and marketing world is fast evolving in that direction. And by the launch of the Creative Data Lion.
AI is the next phase of the data revolution, and whether an algorithm will ever replace creativity and have the ability to evolve an emotional response in advertising was a big debate. PHD Worldwide's strategy and planning director Mark Holden, who co-wrote the agency’s book Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution and the Implications for Marketing alongside Sir Tim Berners Lee, said before too long, marketers and ad agencies will be tending machines – not driving creative.
“We’re in a situation where we are still in control of things from a marketing perspective - we produce the ads, decide a media plan … but you already see dynamic creative optimisation, creative based on data put together on the fly, but that will become even more extreme,” he said.
“Marketing tech solutions [will] function like a central nervous system and we are just there tending to it … that’s a complete change for our business and it’s not far away. It’s inevitable and it’s five to 10 years away.”
This might be an extreme vision for some to contemplate, and while data and technology is the reality marketers are working within, that doesn't mean there isn't concern. MillerCoors CMO Gannon Jones, speaking at a panel hosted by The Economist, said that tech and data are getting in the way of creativity, saying, “It’s causing marketers to fixate on the technology and the data.”
You would expect the adtech world to be on board with that future vision. It is, but support for creativity comes from unlikely places. “I feel very passionate about the fact our industry has done itself a disservice by talking about artificial intelligence,” Paul Alfieri, SVP of marketing at tech platform Turn, told AdNews. “Let’s not overstate what an algorithm can do – it can give you insights, it can help you distil and point to where a brand should be delivering messaging – but the creative spark is always going to come from art.”
This article first appeared within the Cannes 2015 Special Report in the July 10 issue of AdNews. Subscribe to AdNews in Print, or get it now on iPad.
Read the rest of the report:
Monica Lewisnky: The price of online humiliation
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