The Scoop from the Beaches of Cannes, with Lauren Livak Gilbert, Executive Director of the Digital Shelf Institute

Transcript

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Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:16):

Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. A couple of weeks ago the advertising and communications industry gathered on the beaches of Cannes for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. In addition to celebrating the best creative work of the past year, there are executives from around the industry connecting to figure out what's next. Our own Lauren Gilbert was part of that throng and she returned with some great insights we just had to share. So I put her in the hot seat for a change. So this is unprecedented. For the first time, I believe Lauren Livak Gilbert is our guest on the podcast. I'm going to just pepper her with questions about her time at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last week. I feel like that needs reverb. It does. How was France?

Speaker 3 (01:08):

It was amazing. I officially want to live in the south of France, so that is the verdict.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:13):

Gee, that's so surprising. When you told me you were going to the festival through a kind invitation from our partners at WPP, we're so grateful I immediately of course looked up the word boondoggle in the dictionary, but I must say after hearing your after action report, I forgave you for not taking me. And I just wanted to, let's just, like I said, just find out what happened there. It sounds like such an amazing conference. Tell us about it.

Speaker 3 (01:43):

Yeah, it was, and just for some context around the conference, because I had a little bit of context going in, but for those that aren't familiar with Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity, it really started as a festival of creativity. It focuses on creativity and marketing and all of the marketers, top marketers across the world come there and it's really centered around the Lions Awards. So they give out awards for the best creative, and that all happens at the main conference at the Palisade. And over the years, it grew to be much more than just marketing and creative and expanded to the beach, which is next to the conference center. And that's where it really kind of exploded. And you saw all of the big names in tech and commerce and retail really set up shop there and have content and have great speakers and celebrities and just so much going on all at once. So it's more than just the conference itself, and it's really expanded to be commerce and retail media focused. And so you saw a really big shift happen over the past couple of years where I think Amazon was really the first retailer to have a big presence at Cannes. And then this year there was Kroger and Instacart, Walmart, you had big tech like Meta, Microsoft, Google, they were all along the beach area. And that's where most of the brands and technology leaders and partners and agencies really spend a lot of their time.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:12):

And I mean, it must've been for you, just an exciting sort of mix of people to be in where the DSI is focuses on. Yeah, because so much of that industry is shifting right now. The budgets are shifting, the organizational structures are shifting, everything's in motion and everyone's following the money to a certain degree. And I'm imagining that's what a lot of the conversations are about.

Speaker 3 (03:42):

And I think the beauty of can and the value that it drives is every single company, whether it's a brand retailer agency partner, their executive leadership team is there. So you're bumping. I literally bumped into someone physically bumped into them on the sidewalk and they ended up being a CEO of a tech company. You just are able to connect with people at a different level than you are anywhere else. And that's really the draw. And to your point, all of the conversations are happening in collaboration with brands, retailers, partners and agencies and tech. And I don't think I've ever been to a conference where they're all together having joint conversations and really

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:23):

At that level,

Speaker 3 (04:24):

Exactly at that level. I mean, I sat in panels where they were talking about retail media three point and it was a brand, a retailer, and a partner talking about how they were going to better work together to define that. And that was just a really incredible experience because these are the conversations like Peter, we need to start having, because if we're all working separately, we're not going to win. We all need to collaborate together. And the content and the conversations and the collaboration is really, I think the huge value of Cam.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:58):

Well, and you said that really retail media and commerce are in some, I don't want to overstate it, I dunno whether they're transforming the conference. Obviously the focus is still on creativity, but a lot of that creativity now is happening in new channels, in new formats and things like that, and that it took a center stage at the conference. So walk us through a little bit of what you heard.

Speaker 3 (05:22):

Yeah, I mean the obvious themes were there. We talked about ai, there was every conversation. I think AI came up, talked about retail media networks and how that was changing. But I think the theme that I kind of pulled from it across any presentation I went to, whether it was from a brand or retail or technology, was that everybody's kind of taking their blinders off and they're really trying to think about how they can either break down silos in their operational process, break down silos in their organization, or better collaborate together to be able to have a more consumer focused approach to commerce. Because having retail media and commerce be at the center, a lot of the conversation was around how do we get closer to the consumer? How do we better understand how they're shopping, when they're shopping, where they're shopping, and what we can give to them at the right time to be able to do that?

(06:17):

And so that theme kind of ran across every session I went to, whether it was a small brand who was trying to figure out how do we be more bold even though we have a really small budget and think about breaking down the conventional walls of marketing to big brands who are talking about needing to create shared goals for all of their different functions to make sure everybody's working towards commerce versus just siloed and in-store and online. So it really kind of ran the gamut from really small companies to larger companies and retailers as well.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (06:56):

Yeah, I'm thinking, well one, because no one ever invited me to go to camp. I am not sure that this is the case, but I'm imagining that in earlier days when so much of creativity was poured into mass media campaigns, big TV that I would imagine because the consumer has now, they have so many channels that they rely on throughout their journey that it's not so simple anymore to make that happen and to be able to show up creatively across every place the consumer wants and have it all meshed together into a cohesive message. So I'm imagining when you talk about taking the blinders off, it's like let's stop pretending that all of these folks can operate in silos, end up with anything that's coherent and performative with the consumer. Is that

Speaker 3 (07:57):

A thousand percent? Very, very well said. I mean, I think the consumer is the one who change the conference, right? Because you can't think in a silo anymore because the consumers aren't shopping in a silo. And one of my favorite quotes from one of the presentations I sat in was that everything and nothing has changed in marketing. And I think that sums it up so well. When you think about creativity and the channels that we're operating on, creativity is still really important. Content is super important. You still need to build a brand, you need to surprise and delight your consumer, but the way that you do that and the channels that you do that on are changing and you need to have operational excellence to be able to do that. And that comes with breaking down the walls between sales and marketing and supply chain and r and d and having retailers, brands, technology and partners come together to be able to solve that problem. Before they didn't have to. And now we all need each other.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (09:00):

And I would imagine they need to understand that whole path to purchase. I would think that multi-touch attribution is so important to be able to design creative that shows up wherever it's happening. Was that part of the conversation?

Speaker 3 (09:25):

Yes, very much. And making sure that that creative is also authentic and personalized to the consumer and to the channel that you're on. So there was a lot of conversation around social, and we will talk about that a bit and the creator economy, but there was also a lot of conversations around how am I making sure that my content is effective on all of my different channels and personalized in a way that the consumer is getting additional value. One brand shared this example, and it was one of my favorites. They sell pasta sauce and they usually are selling pasta sauce in that category online and in their end caps in store. And they worked with one of the retailer partners and by looking at the data, they realized that when their consumers bought pasta sauce, they also bought generic brand ground beef because they were probably making lasagna. So they started targeting their ads in the category of ground beef when people were buying that. And then they would also send them content on recipes to make lasagna. So I loved that example because I thought about the fact that it's relevant, it's personalized to the consumer because they're using the data from the retailer, they're using the insights they have as the brand, they're bringing that together and then they're creating a better experience for the consumer in an authentic way.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (10:51):

Did you get at the conference the, we've talked a bit about it on the podcast and certainly at the summit about the future of personalization and that where on the threshold of a great unlock, particularly as more of these interactions happen on retailer properties where they have a lot of data about the consumer. So there's sort of that first party data, but also the potential of AI to unlock being able to do it at scale was personalization. And did you sense some excitement about that happening or? Oh

Speaker 3 (11:34):

Yes, a hundred percent. And the two things that were talked about with personalization were data and ai. You hit the nail on the head there. I mean Microsoft's entire theme was that it was not creative. You are, and they were talking about how AI will power personalization, and then you need the data to be able to back that up. And a lot of conversations were about first party data, the death of the cookie, how to think about using your first party data to better understand your consumer, create the right creative on the right channel, and then who in your organization needs to receive that information? Where does it live? It went down the whole gamut of how you think about personalization. I think the excitement was around bringing retailers, brands and agencies together to pool all of your data and resources and tell a better story.

(12:28):

A lot of panels had someone representative from a retailer brand and an agency, and they were talking about examples of how they've worked together. I sat in on a panel around Disney and Walt Disney is obviously they have Disney plus. So they were talking about some of their offerings on TV and how they're targeting specific ads based on the household, based on this age of the child in that household. So they're using data that they already have about their consumer to better personalize the experience. And that goes across social media, tv, commerce, even in store, which was really exciting to see. There was another story that I really loved where a brand was talking about they had this really exciting end cap in a grocery store for one of their products, I believe it was toothpaste. And they were super excited about it. They got this place, but they never were able to get it before and people were going to the store, but they didn't want to buy it in store, they wanted to buy it online and people were going to the Amazon PDP, and it was out of stock. And so it was a perfect example of if you don't have all of your functions working together and you're working in a silo, you're wasting dollars.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:44):

You just waste of your money and caps are not cheap. So frustrating. No,

Speaker 3 (13:50):

Neither are ads. Fascinating.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (13:51):

You talked sort of at the beginning of this little segment about everything and nothing has changed in marketing and often creative stems from the creative brief process. I'm guessing that hasn't changed, but did you sort of hear that talked like is that evolving in this new world or is that still the core of things?

Speaker 3 (14:13):

And I was super excited about this just coming from my brand side because I remember the briefing process can be really challenging when you're briefing about writing creative or starting a new campaign. And I actually heard several different brands talk about how the briefing process needs to be more flexible in order to create the right content. Because right now it's very, okay, here's the standard, here's the questions we ask. This has to happen first, then it needs to go to the agency, then it needs to go to approval. And it doesn't have areas in the brief that talk about maybe it's only e-commerce specific, or maybe it's an in-store and an e-commerce campaign. So we need to think about it differently. And so a lot of the conversations were around how can you evolve the briefing process to apply more specifically to the channel that you are selling on or to the consumer so that you can incorporate more channels rather than just maybe in store or social or just thinking about the asset itself.

(15:16):

And one of the brands that spoke, they were saying that they actually brought their agency into the process earlier and had more of a round table discussion with all of the functions that needed to be involved in the campaign while they were writing the brief. Because sometimes it can be a bit of a top down where the brand marketer fills out the brief and then hands it to someone and then nobody talks about it. So they're starting much earlier to consider commerce and the briefing process so it doesn't get to the end and then you realize, I dunno, I'm

Lauren Livak Gilbert (15:49):

Making this up. This is not actually going to work.

Speaker 3 (15:51):

Or the product is not e-commerce ready or the packaging is wrong or anything like that. So what was really unique, I think about a lot of these conversations was they brought the operational side of marketing into the discussion, and I heard someone say that that was the unlock for them. And what I really kind of observed is that there's no lack in creativity. Everybody has creativity, they have great content, great agencies, but they are not being brilliant at the basics around operations and around actually executing it. And a lot of brands are revisiting that to make sure that they can do that at scale quickly to be able to deploy their creative.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (16:33):

And I would imagine making sure that they're working with agencies who get that. I would imagine, again, not having been invited that

Speaker 3 (16:44):

Next year, Peter, next year,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (16:47):

Oh my gosh, I'll have to get

Speaker 3 (16:48):

You your outfits ready. It was

Lauren Livak Gilbert (16:50):

Definitely intense. Yeah, no, no. I'll be one of the tech bros that just wears a black T-shirt and

Speaker 3 (16:57):

There were people like that,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (16:58):

So I'm sure there was. So I have to get back on track. What was I talking about?

Speaker 3 (17:08):

I don't know what you were going to talk about. We're talking about the briefing process and

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:13):

Oh, I know that this must be a time you have to keep all that in. This must be a time for agencies to really restructure and bring in a wider swath of expertise to be able to be the partner that their brands need to make all this happen. I'm sure that was,

Speaker 3 (17:38):

Yes, that was another thing that was a big topic of conversation and a lot of brands presented with their agencies, but then a lot of brands presented without agencies and they actually were asking the agencies for more help and saying, this is what we need from our partners, this is how we should be operating, this is what we need to accelerate. And so it was almost like a cry for let's do this differently. Let's work together in a very, very collaborative way. But I also heard the retailers and the brands talk about how they need to change the agency structure to better meet the needs of the brands and retailers and how that is shifting because their structures are shifting. So everybody needs to be very, very clear around who owns what at the brand, at the retailer, and at the agency, and make sure that those are the right people in the conversation, because that has drastically shifted. And I think there's just a bit of confusion and everyone just needs to kind of sort that out.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:39):

And you can talk about those things at a shop talk or a digital shelf summit or something. But when you're talking about it where all of the major principles of each one of those are sitting in the room, that makes a difference.

Speaker 3 (18:52):

It really does. That's why it was just such a unique experience and there were so many people there from the commerce world, and I really see it growing year over year because of that.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (19:03):

So I'm sure there were a number of themes that stood out to you, but I dunno, pick another one. What's the one that seemed like the next biggest thing?

Speaker 3 (19:13):

The creator economy. There was a lot of talk about user generated content, influencers, social commerce. And I loved someone who spoke on a panel said this. They were like, listen, we're not at scale yet. We are not. Social commerce is not a main revenue driver for brands, but you need to be able to build the muscle now for when it is because user generated content is now consumed more than agency created content. And Accenture song at the conference was talking about Gen Alpha, which is the generation after Gen Z, and they are going to spend more time doing discovery. They're going to spend 126 hours doing discovery on social versus in store. And so this is going to continue to be important. And there was a lot of conversation around how are we creating user generated content and how are we working with influencers? How internally in our organization will we be able to support that?

(20:17):

And I thought it was, it was great to hear that the brand said they need some more trust with their influencers and the people that are creating user generated content because brands want to control it. They want to control the narrative, they want to control the story. That influencer or the user generated content tells about the product, but you can't. And it actually then becomes unauthentic, which is not what the consumer wants. So I loved the conversations around that, and they had some influencers there with their brands, and it was really just funny to watch and have them say, listen, we got it. We understand what you want. Let us use our brand to tell that story and we can have a conversation. But please don't say you need to say these words or you need to do this because that takes away from the authenticity of the influencer and their story and talking about their product. So overall, the creator economy and the use of user generated content was a hot topic across many, many panels that I sat on because it is the current situation for Gen Z, it's the future for Gen Alpha. And I think with ai, people are more concerned around content and reviews, but if there's videos or user generated content or influencers that they trust, they're going to get their information from them. So how can brands use them to tell their story?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:48):

That's fascinating. And for a while, creator economy meant celebrities, and then there was the next layer of creators, which had large enough audiences. They aren't celebrities, but within their niche now, it seems like there's a universe of them that gets increasingly sort of micro but still super valuable if you can collaborate with them at scale. Was that sort of conversation on, is that part of this sort of next generation of creators that they're going to tap into?

Speaker 3 (22:27):

Yes. Actually the panel that I sat in on it, they were considered a micro influencer because they don't have millions of followers, but they drove such value for the brand because it was their niche audience. So it's less about having the celebrities. And there were a lot of celebrities there. I accidentally bumped into Sean White, the snowboarder, so that was fun. Oh, wow. I didn't know it was him until after I walked past

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:49):

Him. Did you knock him off his snowboard?

Speaker 3 (22:51):

I did not. He was checking into his hotel and I kind of bumped into him. I was like, oh, hi. And he said, hi. And I walked past and I was like, that was Sean White. But anyway, so it's no longer about the big celebrities, it's about finding your niche market and having an influencer who has really great credibility in that space.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (23:14):

So when you talk about niche, that just brings to mind when I think about where the growth's coming from over this next decade of the digital shelf, there'll still always be the huge campaigns that drive billions of dollars or whatever. But I think a lot of the growth is going to come from getting better everywhere, showing up everywhere, optimizing everywhere, getting down to this whole personalization niche. I want marketing for me kind of stuff. I think that's where the growth's going to come from for a lot of people. Do you agree with that? And does it seem like that's where a lot of this conversation was going?

Speaker 3 (24:04):

Yes, a hundred percent. A lot of the conversations were around how can we keep the customers that we have and how can we make sure that we're providing value to them? And if we are going to go out and find new customers, they need to be really authentic to our brand. And it was less about, let's try to use all of this data that we have to go and create these massive campaigns and more about, let's take our first party data, let's take the data from the retailers, let's create a story of what that looks like, and then get really, really laser focused on what our brand story is, how we're telling it, and where we're going to tell it. And let's make sure that internally we're operating efficiently to be able to do that. And from our leadership level all the way to the people actually doing the work, they're in support of that and they're kind of working cohesively in order to do that.

(24:56):

And I thought that was interesting hearing from a lot of the C-suite, how they talked about their teams working together. They were very, very focused on, okay, we need to make sure everybody's aligned on the ultimate goal. We have to have the right technology in place. We need to make sure that we're, a lot of people use brilliant at the basics or operational execution. Make sure that's super clear, and then make sure that our brand voice and our brand story is clear as well. And I think that was important to come from the top down because if they understand that, then it'll really kind of move throughout the entire organization.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (25:32):

Wow. Well, I'm delighted you went. Thank you. That's a way bigger feeling than my resentment at not being there. And you had so many valuable conversations there. I know one of them you recorded, so I want to make sure folks are listening to this podcast that they go back to. Last you had a chance to talk with Jeff Cohen, who's the principal of evangelist at Amazon Ads for a really terrific episode.

Speaker 3 (26:02):

Congratulations. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Yeah, Jeff is awesome. Definitely listened to that. He gave a lot of insight around the Amazon canvas, which is how they're talking about their suite of offerings. So we talked about A MC, some of the under utilized elements of A MC, how to think about data. We talked about the Canva integration. So definitely go and check that out from the Amazon side of things. If you work on that, it's a great listen.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:29):

And also, if folks want to know some more of the themes that you uncovered while you were there, of course they can go to your blog on LinkedIn, Lauren Levi Gilbert. I'm sure everyone who listens to this is already connected with you. By all means do. And Lauren, thank you for letting me pepper you with questions. This was delightful.

Speaker 3 (26:49):

Thanks, Peter. This was great. And next year you'll be at Cannes. I believe it. I'm going to wish it into existence.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:56):

Oh, we'll see about that. Actually, for an introvert, it sounds,

Speaker 3 (27:00):

I'm not going to lie. It is a lot. And also I walked 22,000 steps every day because from one end of the beach to the other, it's over a mile. So it is a lot of walking, it's a lot of connecting. So if that is your cup of tea, definitely go. If not,

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:17):

Yeah, I'll have to store up my batteries for that adventure. Yes. So thank you so much for joining us, Lauren.

Speaker 3 (27:24):

Thanks Peter.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:26):

Thanks to Lauren for making the huge sacrifice of going to the beaches at Cannes. All I can offer you is free membership in the dsi@digitalshelfinstitute.org. That's about the same. Right. Thanks for being part of our community.