As Day 3 of Cannes Lions comes to an end, Cannes Canada Advisory Board Members, Shannon Lewis and Karen Howe, share their highlights from the day. Follow our daily recaps, Q&A’s with industry execs, and festival breakdowns at Globe Media Group’s Cannes Lions hub.
In this edition:
- Elon Musk stuns at The Lumiere
- The Journal House with WSJ
- Supercharging with Google
- Spotlight with Snap Inc’s COO
- Aspirational Intelligence
- Canadas Lions totals
“Enjoy the Ride” or “A Crisis of Meaning”?
Elon Musk. There it is. The top trend at Cannes Lions this year a day early. He is a living, breathing galactic-level disruptor – equal parts inspiring and terrifying. As an avowed advocate of free speech “within the bounds of law” notoriety dogged him after he suggested advertising could go “%@#$” itself for punishing him for unpopular social stances.
That aside, the bigger question he tackled is “AI, friend or foe?”
Musk shares the same point of view as Jeff Hinton, the “godfather of AI”, that there’s a 10 to 20% chance of AI being catastrophic. We need to teach AI to be truthful and curious. (Houston, do we already have a problem?)
Musk feels AI can enhance human intelligence versus replace it. Yet in 1 to 5 years, there may be an existential crisis – if AI can do most things we do better, why do anything? What is our purpose?
Musk feels the future belongs to those who learn to use AI most effectively.
With regards to advertising it’s a classic point of view, do work augured in human insight. But context is everything. People don’t inherently know what product they want, such as an electric car. You have to parse human need. According to Monk, “People won’t tell you they want an automobile. They’ll tell you they want a faster horse.”
Musk has undeniably done much for the planet – and society– through the creation of Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX and Neurolink. He thinks we are living in the most interesting time in history. Yet the words of Musk that really stay with me are these, “Even if annihilation is happening, I want to see it.”
At the same time, Musk extols us to “enjoy the ride.”
Indeed.
– Karen Howe, Cannes Canada Advisory Board Member and Young Lions Mentor
The AI Era: Supercharging Marketing and Creativity with Google
Speakers:
- Vidhya Srinivasan, Vice-President and General Manager, Advertising, Google
- Alexander Chen, Director, Creative Lab, Google
Google explores unlocking new ways to learn, ideate, and create in the AI Era. With Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s Ads Product Vice President, and Alex Chen, Director at the Creative Lab leading the charge, AI is supercharging creativity and marketing like never before. The limitless potential of AI to enhance creativity, productivity, and performance is truly groundbreaking. However, let’s not forget that human ingenuity is still at the core of it all.
WSJ Journal House: A Look at the Race for Power in the U.K. and U.S. with Times Media and The Wall Street Journal
- Daniel Finkelstein, Columnist, The Times
- Tony Gallagher, Editor, The Times
- Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO, Stagwell
- Ben Taylor, Editor, The Sunday Times
- Emma Tucker, Editor in Chief, The Wall Street Journal
– Shannon Lewis, Cannes Canada Advisory Board Member and Young Lions Mentor
Canada’s Lions Totals
- Gold: 4
- Silver: 14
- Bronze: 21
- Shortlists: 166
