The Cannes Lions (or the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, to give it its full name) isn’t usually a place for CEOs, not unless it’s CEOs of advertising agencies, tech companies or media conglomerates.
In other words, it’s not usually a place for people like me, or probably you.
During our time as cofounders of Four Pillars Gin, Stu Gregor, Cameron McKenzie and I spent plenty of time traveling around the world to attend drinks festivals and events, but the idea of spending a week in the South of France to ponder questions like “brand versus performance marketing” would’ve felt like self-sabotaging madness.
But times change. I’m not a gin slinger these days. I’m a brand and business strategist. And I’m here because I got invited to the relatively new Cannes Lions Global CEO Forum, held this year for just the second time.
It seems the organisers of Cannes think that creative thinking and the power of story should be applied to more than just advertising, and of course they’re right.
The question for me is whether Cannes has anything useful to say to those of us in the business of start-ups, scale-ups and leadership, beyond “hire a creative agency”.
The power of story
My first day here in the hot, hot, hot south of France was spent at the CEO Forum. The rest of the time has been spent listening to marketing leaders and technology executives and dodging sweaty advertising agency teams heading for the beach parties (sorry, brand activations) that seem to have filled every square metre of Cannes’ famous Croisette beach.
But that’s all fodder for another column, for now let’s stay with the CEOs.
I found myself in an intimidatingly impressive and powerful room full of CEOs from around the world, and from an incredible variety of billion-dollar categories. I’ll save discussion of my imposter syndrome for my therapist and spare you my psychological blushes.
Our day of conversations (which were held under Chatham House Rule, so I can’t say much about what my fellow delegates said) was fuelled by new research brought into the room by McKinsey, Interbrand and Edelman.
First up was fresh research from Interbrand on the role of brand in the age of AI.
Interbrand traced the evolution of the idea of ‘brand’, pointing out rightly that a brand today is so much more than the design assets and identity systems that have typically been managed by marketing teams (in all honesty, it always has been so much more than just your logo).
Brands need to live in the experiences we give our customers, reminding us that senior leaders like founders and CEOs need to champion and prioritise brand thinking (and, to be blunt, fund it too) not just leave the brand to a junior employee and a half-baked performance marketing strategy.
Interbrand then went further and described the current cultural moment as an “age of visibility”. In this new era of radical scrutiny and transparency for brands and businesses, people increasingly see little difference between the reputation and behaviour of a CEO and the reputation of a brand itself.
CEOs, in other words, can either contribute a reputation premium or act as a reputation drag on the brands they lead.
Elon Musk is perhaps a perfect case in point. For many Tesla drivers, he has recently had a significantly negative effect on their feelings for the brand. But for many more SpaceX investors, Musk’s sense of will, destiny and a Tony Stark-like mythology has contributed an extraordinary level of brand belief to the most heavily multiplied IPO in history.
Why ‘build in public’ makes sense
The outtakes?
First, whatever the story of what you’re building, and whether your edge is to be found in your heritage, your perspective, your technology, your product advantages or your brilliant customer experiences, the founder or CEO has access to one of the most powerful and impactful megaphones available to tell that story, particularly when you’re operating on the low budgets of a startup.
No wonder so many founders now choose the ‘build in public’ path. Interbrand’s research suggests that there probably isn’t another choice.
My view is they’re right, but with a caveat: just because you build in public doesn’t mean you need to put all your flaws or mistakes on display. And nor should your brand story be as chaotic as the inevitable experience of leadership in such a fast-moving and volatile time.
Instead, your brand image and story should still be considered and intentional.
The age of authentic
Which leads to the second outtake.
In an age of authentic, leader-delivered brand storytelling, brand has to be defined more as a narrative, a belief system and a conversation and less as a rigid playbook of logos and rules. Your brand needs to be a story you can tell over and over again, with consistency, variety, personality and authenticity.
Not only does it need to be true, but it needs to feel true coming out of your mouth.
Next up was Edelman, the world-famous PR agency, sharing its findings on brand reputation from its latest Trust Barometer.
First, they delivered the bad news. The world is more insular than at any time since the invention of the printing press. It’s this insularity that has people turning inwards to familiar sources and belief-based echo chambers. That’s bad, by the way. And then they delivered more bad news. People today trust institutions less and less, particularly people at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.
In short, while trust is just about the most valuable thing a business can build, businesses aren’t great at building it. But people are.
The face of the brand
And who’s the most visible person in a company? Usually it’s the founder or CEO. So not only does the leader need to take responsibility for telling positive and differentiated brand stories over and over again, but they also need to do the heavy lifting on building trust.
No pressure founder friends.
Combine the thinking from Interbrand and Edelman and it’s clear that, like it or not, the job of the leader more and more is to be the loudest voice and most visible face of the brand.
Without intentionally filling this column with MAGA-adjacent anecdotes, this is why Donald Trump loves social media. Because it gives him an unfiltered loudspeaker to carry his voice directly to the people. Without his unique direct-to-voter communications style there would have been no first Trump presidency, let alone a second term.
What AI brings
Last up on the stage were a pair of reliably boffin-sized brains from McKinsey’s AI team. Their research showed that leaders were rapidly shifting from early exuberance around the personal adoption of AI productivity tools to big picture anxiety about how to best harness the full power of agentic AI for their businesses.
Their advice? Stop thinking about AI simply as a tool of elimination, something that allows leaders to cut time, complexity and cost from their businesses. And start applying a growth mindset to the application of AI, seeking opportunities to do and create whole new things, or deliver value-adding services and experiences to customers in previously unimaginable ways.
The conversations that followed were rich and varied. We heard CEOs talk about approaches to building organisational cultures that championed creativity and that empowered staff to take risks.
Frankly, I heard a lot of large, global CEOs wish they had the entrepreneurial freedom to act like startup founders (just as most of us startup folks have occasionally wished we had the budgets of global CEOs).
Above all, the conversations reflected the research that kicked us off. Never has it been more important for a business to take every opportunity to tell its story, live its story by prioritising experiences, humanise its brand and build trust.
And no one is better placed to do all that that its CEO or founder.
Oh, and they need to become their company’s number one AI cheerleader too. As if they didn’t already have enough to do.
