Discover 7 key takeaways from the fascinating panels that took place during Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. We’ll touch on everything from the industry’s thoughts on the potential TikTok ban, to delivering truly memorable influencer content. Stay ahead of the curve and prepare to maximize your brand's impact in the Influencer Marketing industry.
Consumers have more choice than ever before to decide what they engage with, especially on social media platforms - skips and swipes are muscle memory. Nobody has to watch the content you put out as a brand, so what value can you offer?
On a panel at Journal House (Wall Street Journal), Colin & Samir - YouTube creators, podcasters, and leading voices in the Creator Economy - discussed how YouTube still reigns supreme at delivering “memorable views” for brands via creator content. Why? If you spend an hour on TikTok or Instagram you’ll scroll past hundreds if not thousands of individual pieces of content. If you sit down to watch YouTube for an hour you’ll watch maybe 4 or 5 videos.
There has been a significant rise in the number of people watching YouTube on CTV - about 30% of Colin & Samir’s audience are watching on CTV delivering an average view duration of over 40 minutes - if brands integrate (effectively) into this content, they can massively benefit from the deeper emotional connections that YouTube creators have built with their audiences. Audiences' time spent with brands on YouTube is unrivaled.
That said, TikTok and Instagram are still seen as the most culturally relevant places for branded content to exist. Colin & Samir discuss how content on these platforms can be seen more as “units of conversation” - they offer brands the opportunity to be very reactionary and insert themselves into trends and online discourse to stay front-of-mind, even if they are only seen briefly as part of a wider barrage of content. Creativity on these short-form-first platforms also offers incredible opportunities for brands to be memorable, but I’ll touch on that in the “Storytelling” section later on…
It’s so simple, but so often ignored. Be sure to read comments on your posts and watch videos where people are posting about your content - they’re telling you exactly what they truly want from you as a brand.
Kory Marchisotto - CMO for e.l.f Beauty - discussed how customers are multifaceted, so just looking at data and research is not enough, you need to speak to customers en masse to truly understand them. This is why e.l.f Beauty hosts live streams on their TikTok to let their audience ask questions and give feedback in real-time. New e.l.f Beauty products have been developed as a direct result of these audience interactions.
Outside of learning about the demand for new products, when it comes to working in harmony with influencers, brands need to understand the width and depth of the creator's audience to make sure they’re aligned and can integrate in the most impactful way possible - read comments to understand how engaged their audience is, maybe even discover what the audience’s inside jokes are. Make audiences feel heard.
On a slightly similar note about reading the posts your customers make, during an insightful panel with the team behind the Michael CeraVe campaign - which was the talk of the Croisette - they discussed how this award-winning creative was born from reading an old Reddit post that suggested the original “conspiracy”.
If you’re not taking creative risks then you may never unlock new opportunities to deliver real impact. Dara Treseder - CMO of Autodesk - discussed how she always leaves space to take creative risks and makes her team feel comfortable doing so. This way they’ve been able to take their “Make Anything” campaigns to the next level.
Building on this, Geico’s Vice President of Creative and Content Michelle Moscone explained how a lot of their success came from thinking how if they played the same game as the bigger players they’d lose - they needed to approach marketing an insurance product, typically done through fear, completely differently with comedy paving the way.
In one of my favorite panels of the festival “Humor has left the chat,” there were some fantastic discussions around aversion to risk and the declining amount of humor in advertising.
Liquid Death’s VP of Creative Andy Pearson shared how they make a lot of small bets because you never know what’s going to hit or not, and their approach to marketing is simply to “be the best thing someone sees today” - especially in a world of so much marketing noise as mentioned above. Funnily enough, my first panel of the festival was with e.l.f Beauty, and my last was with Liquid Death, and these two brands took a creative risk on a brilliant collaboration… Corpse Paint.
A lot of advertising, especially within the influencer space, feels like it goes straight for the hard sell jugular, but brands need to be getting people excited, committed, and invested.
Adam Kornblum, Global Chief Creative of Global Brands at L’Oreal, discussed the importance of patience - the soft sell - when advertising through storytelling online. How do you get people interested in an everyday skincare product? You work with macro influencers to start a conspiracy around Michael Cera. Then you use that buzz to seed smaller influencers who are excited to jump on the hype and make branded content for you. Then you win a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
When it comes to Gen Z there was a lot of discussion about marketing in a way that makes them feel seen and cared for. Caroline Gregory, Global Brand Director at Axe / Lynx is working closely with this target audience to understand nuanced comedy within the online discourse and implementing this into their social media strategy - particularly important when Gen Z is a generation who are much more receptive to self-aware brands.
This is a weird one… because it wasn’t really mentioned at all. One of the biggest social media platforms with billions of ad dollars spent on it each year potentially being banned in the US… apparently not a big thing at an advertising summit. The only mention I heard on a panel is that brands aren’t too worried, they’ll just shift and adapt to another platform (maybe it’s YouTube Shorts’ time to shine?), so the bigger worry is for influencers who haven’t diversified.
I was lucky enough to keep stumbling across talks that Colin & Samir were involved with, and, when they were asked what the future of the Creator Economy looks like, it was interesting to hear them discuss the slow phasing out of the word “Creator”. This is because “Creator” is such a broad-stroke term, and there are so many nuances of different types of creators that it is hard for the industry to fully understand.
Maybe we’ll see a shift back to legacy terms like Comedians, or Journalists (who just happen to use social media as their outlet) - instead of “comedy creator” or “a creator who talks about current affairs”.
I unexpectedly caught the end of a chat with Will.i.am where he was demonstrating his AI venture that aims to champion more diversity and inclusion in the tech space - FYIelicia is an AI voice that speaks in a way that more closely reflects inner-city America. It’ll be interesting to see this develop.
In conclusion, the insights shared by these industry experts shine a light on the ever-evolving marketing landscape and how today’s brand strategies need to adapt to succeed. As highlighted by industry leaders such as Colin & Samir, e.l.f. Beauty, Autodesk, Liquid Death, and Geico, an emphasis on nailing the creative within your marketing, especially when it comes to partnering with influencers, is paramount.
To stand out from the crowd, brands should:
If you want to drive impactful influencer campaigns that resonate with audiences in 2024 and beyond reach out to us at hello@digitalvoices.com.
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