Yusuf Chuku, NBCUniversal's EVP of Strategic Planning and Commercial Impact, sat down with global marketing leaders at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to uncover what topics had ignited conversations along la Croisette this year. Find out what everyone was talking about with Yusuf and CMO Now, NBCUniversal's exclusive network for C-Suite marketers, below.
CMO NOW: Conversations in Cannes
Purpose
Sustainability
Diversifying Diversity
AI: An Enabler or a Threat?
Personalization
Techno Optimism
Storytelling at Scale
A lot of the core principles of our industry are not changing radically just because there's a bunch of new buzzwords out there and new tech and tools to play with.
Katie Hudson, MD Head of Innovation, Publicis
Marketing leaders continue to grapple with a set of familiar and ever-present challenges. Economic headwinds caused by the cost-of-living crisis continue to strengthen. Myriad demographic, environmental, and cultural forces are reshaping our societies and markets. But, as CMOs gathered for Cannes Lions 70, there was a sense that 2023 may herald a new era of technological innovation and disruption in marketing. AI is not new. From the metaverse to blockchain, the latest tech is always part of the conversation. Yet, generative AI feels different. Anticipation and debate about AI’s transformative power color every aspect of the industry agenda.
None of the CMOs we spoke to claim to have a blueprint for the future. They are humble about what they don’t know. They are also confident that the core principles of great marketing will remain intact. It is still about the right value proposition, the right products, the right price, and ensuring that your brand solves problems and is relevant to as many people as possible. Leading marketers are determined that, no matter how generative AI and other tools play out, technological innovations remain in service of these marketing fundamentals and must not distract us from them.
Ultimately, successful CMOs remain focused on understanding people and identifying opportunities to enhance the cultural relevance and social impact of their brands. Now, more than ever, purpose is the guiding principle. Doing more on sustainability is imperative. Building a more inclusive industry is a matter of social justice and key to business effectiveness. The jury may be out on whether AI will be an enabler or a threat to creativity. But, in an increasingly fluid and plural world, the real enabler is cognitive diversity and critical thinking. Driving progress depends on broadening the industry worldview and deep engagement with diverse perspectives and communities.
Michelle Taite, CMO, Intuit Mailchimp
How do we pop into pop culture in a way that is natural and distinctive?
In 2022, the message from CMOs was ‘purpose is here to stay,’ despite the insistence of some critics that it would run out of steam in the face of new economic realities ushered in by the
cost-of-living crisis. However, in 2023, CMOs approached purpose with renewed vigour and realism. Far from a management fad, purpose is seen by many as the central organizing principle that helps brands find their place in culture. For Conny Braams, CDCO at Unilever, purpose is key in creating emotional connections and distinctive brand positioning. Gulen Bengi, Chief Growth Officer at Mars Wrigley, emphasizes the importance of purpose-based messaging in driving cut through and connecting touchpoints in an increasingly fragmented landscape. CMOs acknowledge there is much public cynicism about brands’ purpose agenda.
There is also a determination to eradicate the bandwagoning and various forms of ‘washing’ that threaten to undermine the potential of purposeful marketing. As Julia Goldin, LEGO Group Chief Marketing and Product Officer, observes, ‘we don’t talk, we do.’ Julia highlights the need for marketers to be more ‘humble’ about the scale of the challenge they face in making a meaningful contribution to changing people’s lives for the better. Through the lens of purpose, industry leaders are now exploring the most fundamental questions about the future job spec of the CMO and, indeed, the future business model for marketing. EY Global Brand and Marketing Leader John Rudaizky speaks for many when he asks: ‘What's future value? Is it the circular economy? Moving from growth to thriving?’ CMOs are engaging at the deepest level about systemic change in our society and how marketing needs to evolve to ensure it is part of the solution and not part of the problem.
1. Purpose: The Guiding Principle
Mark Kirkham, CMO, PepsiCo
Purpose is playing a massive role. Understanding and owning what your brand stands for, what your brand can do more than just the product or service and actually how it can emotively connect.
“System sustainability is not hype … we need less companies using sustainability to sell more. We need more to do it because we are good citizens, and we need to be aware we have the power to change the world.” Yves Briantais, VP Marketing APAC, Colgate-Palmolive.
Sustainability continues to gather momentum, with many companies acknowledging the moral imperative and competitive advantage to be realized for those who embrace it. Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer at L’Oréal, showcased how Garnier are thinking holistically about sustainability across the value chain: from beauty tech innovations that reduce water usage by 69%, to collaborations with French start-up Impact Plus to measure and reduce the CO2 emissions of digital advertising. However, celebrating success goes hand-in-hand with a sense of humility and realism about where the industry has progressed to in terms of sustainability. Kathleen Hall, Chief Brand Officer at Microsoft, describes the sustainability agenda as still ‘pretty nascent.’ Hall observes that “we are not quite there yet on what that scorecard looks like.” Sustainable marketing is still up for grabs. The focus now is on committing to system change and organizational transformation as well as encouraging individual behavior change in consumers. There is a growing sense that settling for ‘incremental change’ in either domain simply won’t be sufficient. CMOs are clear that the climate crisis is an existential threat which demands that they approach sustainability with the same disruptive zeal and creativity they bring to any other classic business challenge.
2. Sustainability: Have We ‘Got This’?
Kathleen Hall, Chief Brand Officer, Microsoft
It's really like any solution. You’ve got to identify the problem clearly first and then work backwards. I think we're still looking at where all the areas of opportunity for impact are, but we don't have all the answers yet.
Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble
You start with representation. Then you go to relevance. Then you create. You have the recipe for really good growth.
When it comes to diversifying the marketing industry, CMOs agree there is still much to do. In recent years, the industry has made a significant effort to improve the representativeness of advertising in front of the camera. The industry’s creative output looks different than it did a few years ago: featuring a far more diverse cast of people drawn from more plural backgrounds, lived experiences, and identities. However, as Conny Braams from Unilever highlights, only 6% of ads feature characters over the age of 65. This neglect of a growing and increasingly economically and culturally influential demographic is indicative of the breadth and depth of the challenge facing marketers. There is a need to confront industry biases and broaden the marketing worldview to ensure that the industry is maximizing economic opportunity and social impact. Creating marketing that represents everyone requires marketers to do much more in the boardroom and throughout every marketing function. As the influence of AI grows, Jatinder Singh, Global Intelligence Lead at Accenture Song, reminds the audience that there is also a need to ensure that the data sets that fuel technological transformation are representative, equitable, and reflective of society.
3. Diversifying Diversity
Building inclusive workforces and ensuring equality of opportunity are important building blocks to a CMO’s commitment to social justice. Many brands, including Procter & Gamble, LEGO, Colgate- Palmolive, and agencies like Wavemaker, also emphasize the need to diversify the way that the marketing industry thinks about diversity. Wavemaker’s ethos of ‘positive provocation’ depends on ‘diversity of thought’ and ‘diversity of people.’ For LEGO, ‘diversity comes in different ways.’ Julia Goldin observes that the world-renowned creativity and cultural impact of LEGO draws heavily on the cognitive diversity of its marketing team. As brands compete for cultural relevance, developing solutions from multiple perspectives and worldviews is critical. Julia also believes that cognitive diversity supercharges creativity and enables the company to engage with what is important for ‘different people, for different societies, for different social communities.’
Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Marketing Officer, LEGO®
Diversity comes in many ways. Of course there's functional ... cultural diversity is also very important, and cognitive diversity.
Indicative of how CMOs are approaching the AI debate, a series of dichotomies and tensions emerged that are still yet to be resolved. One of the most common was whether AI is an enabler, or a threat to creativity. CMOs were adamant that AI will amplify creativity rather than replace it, and that it will not — and should not — replace the creative power of human beings. Jatinder Singh of Accenture Song talked of AI and data being a co-pilot and an ingredient into creativity. Gulen Bengi of Mars Wrigley spoke of AI amplifying human brilliance, whilst Nick Law, Accenture Song Creative Chairperson, commented that AI will ‘automate the bottom,’ leaving people to create the powerful creative work at the top.
Yonca Dervişoğlu, CMO EMEA, Google
it’s efficiency and creativity at the same time. And you always need humans and AI. It’s never going to be the AI itself.
It probably comes as little surprise that generative AI was the hot topic amongst CMOs at Cannes Lions 2023. Andreas Dullweber, Global Head of Marketing and Customer Experience at Bain & Company, argued that generative AI is experiencing its ‘iPhone moment’ — the implication that the technology has been around for years, but has only caught the attention and imagination of the marketing industry fairly recently. For others, such as Conny Braams of Unilever, there was an acceptance that it’s still very early days, and there is a large degree of uncertainty and anxiety as to how it will develop over time. It was felt that many companies don’t even have a clear data strategy in place, which will hinder the adoption of generative AI.
4. AI: An Enabler or a Threat?
Despite this, the emphasis on efficiency looms large over the whole discussion, both explicitly and implicitly. There was a much more realistic view from others that AI is being driven by cost and efficiency. Hamish Davies, Global Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Wavemaker, talked about the impact of AI from an operational perspective, and how it will help keep the business ‘lean.’ Organizational change and an evolution in the way we work is seen as an inevitable outcome of AI adoption. With efficiency so intertwined with the benefits of AI, it is increasingly likely that AI will be a major consideration in decision making in the years ahead.
Marketers believe personalization to be the answer to achieving relevance with consumers, yet the marketing case studies CMOs reference speak powerfully about the need to align their brands with large-scale, mass cultural moments. Mark Kirkham of PepsiCo referenced the company’s sponsorship of women's soccer including Euro 2022, World Cup 2023, and the Champions League final. Jenny Storms, CMO of Entertainment and Sports at NBCUniversal, talked of the need to find your brand's place in culture, referencing the likes of the Olympic Games as the perfect vehicle to achieve this. Julia Goldin of LEGO spoke about the importance of cultural moments and thinking about the issues that are relevant to society as a whole.
Katie Hudson, Global Head of Innovation, Publicis
there's going to be a dawn of a new era of understanding with the ability to micro target and personalize brand messages, the experiences, the content.
Many CMOs were enthused about the role AI will play in ushering in a new era to help brands finally achieve true personalization at scale. Gulen Bengi of Mars Wrigley spoke of consumers demanding personalization to cut through the sheer volume of messages they receive from brands daily. Asmita Dubey of L’Oreal stated that AI would accelerate the process because there is less resource required, operations can be done at speed, and analytics will help marketers double down on what works. Micro-targeting, personalized messaging, and experiences were all referenced as the route to driving relevance with consumers. Thus, another interesting dichotomy emerges.
5. Personalization As The Route to Cultural Relevance?
Whilst the use cases for AI in marketing are plenty, it was striking that when talking about technology solving big societal issues, little was offered in terms of how this might be achieved. There are also a number of tensions within the ‘technology will solve everything’ viewpoint. Don McGuire, CMO of Qualcomm, argued that technology isn’t sustainable because usage of AI requires vast amounts of resources, resulting in a large material footprint to achieve the required computing power. Many CMOs, including Conny Braams of Unilever, raised concerns about responsible business practices, bias in the data, overcoming IP challenges, and potential privacy issues. Without addressing these potential pitfalls, technology could end up exacerbating societal problems instead of fixing them.
Gulen Bengi, Chief Growth Officer, Mars Wrigley
The conversations are getting edgier. We are talking about inclusion and belonging, and, of course, the digital technology breakthroughs that are going to help us solve these issues.
With the adoption of AI and the perceived benefits outlined in the wider report, there was a clear sense that technology will be the solution to solving some of marketing’s biggest challenges. CMOs also spoke openly about how technology will be the answer to solving some of the largest obstacles facing society. With marketing having expanded its remit into social purpose, CMOs and brands believe that they are now firmly part of this conversation. The CMOs we spoke to discussed how technology can help to tackle sustainability and inclusivity challenges. Yonca Dervişoğlu of Google compared AI to the invention of electricity in its transformational impact and suggested that quantum computing will take things a step further.
6. Techno Optimism
As CMOs acknowledge, there is still some way to go in diversifying the industry. Despite efforts, marketing perspectives struggle to accurately and honestly depict the plurality of worldviews that exist in the mainstream. Therefore, with all purpose-led marketing, companies take on a degree of risk at seeming insincere at best and polarizing at worst. As several recent backlashes have shown, there are few, if any, social issues that marketers can choose to communicate on that are not contested on some level. Issue-based advertising has the power to divide as well as unite, increasing the salience of cultural differences and limiting the audience and reach for a brand. Mass entertainment, by its very nature, delivers diverse and plural audiences united by everyday shared interests and pastimes. To achieve the results of purpose-led marketing while avoiding the risk, marketers must focus on being relatable, personable, and likeable to a wide ranging, diverse audience. Being associated with the content that people love and the channels and entertainment properties that bring it to them remains a powerful and impactful way to build emotional connections and enhancing cultural relevancy.
Jenny Storms, CMO, Entertainment & Sports, NBCUniversal
We make sure that we have the right people telling the stories, creating the stories, and then take those stories and bring them to life across our platforms.
CMOs have no doubt that cultural relevance is the route to brand growth and social impact. However, purpose-led marketing is not the only route, nor is it the least risky route, towards establishing emotional connection and brand meaning with mainstream audiences.
Purpose-oriented advertising is predicated on explicit communication of relevant messages. Yet, it is not necessary for brands to be making a statement in every marketing activity. Brands can simply and easily build relevance, emotional identification, and a sense of shared values through association with culturally significant moments and icons, benefitting from the pre-established relationships of trust, relatability, and love that consumers have for characters and events.
1. Mass Communication is Diverse Communication
7. Storytelling at Scale
It will be fascinating to observe how generative AI develops over time. We are now asking ourselves the difficult questions about where AI is heading and the impact it will have on every aspect of the marketing and advertising industry. However, perhaps we’re thinking about AI and technology in the wrong way. There’s no guarantee that technology is the solution. Our findings show that we need more than just blind faith; we should be thinking much more deeply about how the foundational principles of marketing and technology work together, to ensure it makes the transformational impact so desired by marketers.
We should also reconsider the idea that AI is all about personalization. Despite the talk of how personalization at scale is the route to achieving relevance with consumers, CMOs spoke about the critical importance of tapping into mass cultural moments. Personalization has a role to play, but personalization cannot take marketers far without humanization. Brands are built through creating shared, human to human moments with their consumers, created by talented and insightful humans. The influence of advertising is not only greater when seen by as many people as possible, but also from knowing others have seen it too, and shared the same experience. Hyper-personalized messaging makes it very difficult to create shared cultural meaning and, in turn, the cultural relevance all marketers crave for their brands. However, connection can easily be built through aligning with relatable characters and meaningful narratives. Whilst many bemoan the fragmentation of media, there are still a plethora of content brands and media platforms that provide powerful mass cultural moments with which marketers can align their brands.
2. SHARED EXPERIENCES POWER CULTURAL RELEVANCE
Purpose
Sustainability
Diversifying Diversity
AI: An Enabler or a Threat?
Personalization
Techno Optimism
Storytelling at Scale
Intro
Intro
BACK to TOP
CMO NOW: Conversations in Cannes
Jatinder Singh, Global Head of Data & Analytics, Accenture Song
I see AI and now generative AI ... being a co-pilot, being an ingredient into creativity.
Mark Kirkham, CMO, PepsiCo
A lot of the core principles of
our industry are not changing radically just because there's a bunch of new buzzwords out there and new tech and tools to play with." A lot of the core principles of our industry are not changing radically just because … there's a bunch of new buzzwords out there and new tech and new tools to play with.
Kathleen Hall, Chief Brand Officer, Microsoft
Purpose is playing a massive role. Understanding and owning what your brand stands for, what your brand can do more than just the product or service and actually how it can emotively connect.
Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble
It's really like any solution. You’ve got to identify the problem clearly first and then work backwards. I think we're still looking at where all the areas of opportunity for impact are, but we don't have all the answers yet.
Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Marketing Officer, LEGO®
You start with representation. Then you go to relevance. Then you create. You have the recipe for really good growth.
Yonca Dervişoğlu, CMO EMEA, Google
Diversity comes in many ways. Of course there's functional ... cultural diversity is also very important, and cognitive diversity.
Katie Hudson, Global Head of Innovation, Publicis
It’s efficiency and creativity at the same time. And you always need humans and AI. It’s never going to be the AI itself.
Gulen Bengi, Chief Growth Officer, Mars Wrigley
here's going to be a dawn of a new era of understanding with the ability to micro target and personalize brand messages, the experiences, the content.
Jenny Storms, CMO, Entertainment & Sports, NBCUniversal
The conversations are getting edgier. We are talking about inclusion and belonging, and, of course, the digital technology breakthroughs that are going to help us solve these issues.
Jatinder Singh, Global Head of Data & Analytics, Accenture Song
The conversations are getting edgier. We are talking about inclusion and belonging, and, of course, the digital technology breakthroughs that are going to help us solve these issues.
Thank you to
Andreas Dullweber
Global Head of Marketing
& Customer Experience
Bain & Company
Patricia Corsi
Chief Marketing, Digital
& Innovation Officer
Bayer
Tina Mahal
SVP of Marketing
Frito-Lay
Josh Earnest
CCO
United
Lars Silberbauer
CMO
Nokia
Carol Chen
Global CMO & SVP
Shell
Alex Schultz
CMO & VP of Analytics
Meta
Stephane Coruble
CEO
RTL AdConnect
Marissa Solis
SVP Global Brand &
Consumer Marketing, NFL
Bee Leng Tan
Managing Director Brand
& Marketing
CapitaLand Investment
(Ascott)
Yusuf Chuku
EVP, Client Strategy & Insights, Global Advertising and Partnerships
NBCUniversal
Katie Hudson
MD Head of Innovation
Publicis
Michelle Taite
CMO
Intuit Mailchimp
Mark Kirkham
CMO of International Beverages
PepsiCo.
Kathleen Hall
Chief Brand Officer
Microsoft
Marc Pritchard
Chief Band Officer
P&G
Julia Goldin
Chief Product & Marketing Officer
LEGO Group
Yonca Dervişoğlu
VP of Marketing, EMEA
Google
Gulen Bengi
Chief Growth Officer
Mars Wrigley
Jatinder Singh
Global Head of Data & Analytics
Accenture Song
Jennifer Storms
CMO, Entertainment & Sports
NBCUniversal
Nick Law
Creative Chairperson
Accenture Song
Asmita Dubey
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
L'Oreal
Conny Braams
CDCO
Unilever
Don McGuire
CMO
Qualcomm
Yves Briantais
EVP of Marketing APAC
Colgate-Palmolive
John Rudaizky
Global Brand & Marketing Leader
EY
Tyler Bahl
Vice President & Head of Marketing
Activision
William White
CMO
Walmart US
Ritu Lakhanpal
Global Managing Partner
McCann World Group
Matt Brittin
President EMEA
Google
Akbar Hamid
Founder & CEO
The 5th Column
Jennifer Halloran
CMO
Mass Mutual
Nick Law
Creative Chairperson
Accenture Song
Asmita Dubey
Chief Digital
& Marketing Officer
L'Oreal
Conny Braams
CDCO
Unilever
Don McGuire
CMO
Qualcomm
Yves Briantais
EVP of Marketing APAC
Colgate-Palmolive
John Rudaizky
Global Brand &
Marketing Leader
EY
This report was built in partnership with Burst Your Bubble, a new thought leadership consultancy based in London, England.
NBCUniversal’s Yusuf Chuku and Conny Braams, CDCO, Unilever
NBCUniversal’s Yusuf Chuku and Jennifer Storms, CMO Entertainment & Sports, NBCUniversal
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