Day two: Cannes Lions 2022
Day two at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was the busiest plan of my week, with eight sessions across talent, change, ESG, and user experience.
LinkedIn and the fight for great talent
Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn CEO, walked us through changes impacting the fight for great talent with a focus on the advertising industry. Based on LinkedIn's social graph knowledge from 830 million members and 57 million companies. Ryan said that Gen Z moves more frequently than other generations, followed by Millenials, Gen X, and Boomers. He also showed the change in roles within the Advertising industry now requiring tech skills, a 25% increase, and tech skills are becoming table stakes as part of the global arms race for tech talent.
He spoke about storytelling and the invention of the term horsepower by Scottish Engineer James Watt.
"Using a complicated mathematical equation, Watt deduced that a mill horse could push 32,572 pounds one foot in a minute, which he rounded to an even 33,000 pounds. 33,000 pounds pushed one foot in a minute. The power of one horse. One horsepower!" (The Chronicle of the Horse, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/james-watt-and-revolution-horsepower)
Watt found a way to translate scientific measurements into a unit of measure that people could relate to - that of horsepower. Horsepower was a promise of what the steam engine could do. Ryan reinforced that we are in a promise-making business and must make promises, but promises we deliver. Apple did this with the 1,000 songs in your pocket slogan introduced by Steve Jobs 21 years ago in 2001.
Brand activism - Your power as marketers to make big change
A recent study of the top 50 brands approximated that they have 72 billion opportunities to influence consumers through the sales process for their products. This means that marketers have the opportunity to have a professional purpose with the chance of having a planetary impact.
In Diageo, at Guinness, they have adopted a three-pronged approach to sustainability around reinvention, restoration, and reduction.
What can you do to reinvent how you operate?
What can you do to restore the ecosystems in which you operate?
What can you do to reduce the destructive impact across the supply chain?
How can we make a change to the way that we think and the decisions we make to fundamentally change how we approach and value the impact our actions have on the environment.
Leveraging machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce
Jeremi Gorman, Chief Business Officer at Snap Inc, showcased some of the most important features available in Snap that leverage machine learning and augmented reality for experiential digital commerce. Every day more than 250 million people engage with augmented reality in Snap. Snap view themselves as a camera company and they have used technology to extend the user experience. She said that 250 million people have already tried on 5 billion products digitally.
Robert Triefus from Gucci spoke about Gucci's deep belief in digital and he encourage everyone to lean into digital hard. Gucci have used digital to expand their community and to bring new kinds of experiences to their customers. Technology also enables Gucci to give their customers a unique experience across different channels, empowering their community to express creativity, and to provide insights to the business.
A camera is a catalyst to personal creation centering the world around the user authentically. This makes cameras and digital experience a part of the future of personal storytelling with the user an active participant in creating the future.
Break the standard leading business creation with unique experience
The design team from Minna Bank in Japan spoke about how they worked to change from business leading experience to experience leading business.
Taehan Yoo, Design Director, spoke about how many times we copy and paste a design, experience, or idea for safety. But once we have copied and pasted and made our expeirence the same as others the consumer then wants the cheapest experience and this takes us to a place we don't want to be.
At Minna, which means everyone in Japanese, they're focussed on delivering a new approach to digital banking, primarily for digital natives in the Generations Z, Y, and Millenials. Minna's users are 70% from these generations, vs traditional banks whose users are 70% from older generations. [There is a video showcasing Minna bank here](https://youtu.be/irKyj-EpTzQ).
The team of designers were very passionate about their approach to understanding their customers and delivering a frictionless experience. Many of the things they spoke about the experience of banking I could relate to from my own experiences with [N26 in Germany](https://youtu.be/IWwrfkkM4iI), and [Starling Bank](https://youtu.be/E7F7s7AOFNk) in the UK who both deliver a similar frictionless digital experience.
The most interesting thing I learned today was from Snap. When Snap added the weather feature to Snap to add the current weather in as the background to a photo people engage with it and activated the feature millions of times, but didn't save the photo. Snap discovered that people were using their camera as their weather app, and were inserting the weather to get the metrics. So Snap expanded the tool to include a multi-day forecast.
A full day with a lot of ideas around using creativity for growth, and for change.
#CannesLions2022 #IONatCannes
