There’s something in the air on the Croisette this year, and it smells faintly of free sunscreen.
Cannes has two sides.
Tech and Creativity. A symbiotic marriage, or so they keep telling us.
This year, though, the partners are clearly sleeping in separate rooms.
On one side: the tech villages.
Erected almost overnight, these elaborate air-conditioned structures look like the Jetson’s Disneyland sets, built on what used to be a beach.
Sir John Hegarty put it simply: “You used to be able to see the beach, walk on the beach. Now technology has stolen the beach!”
At the Carlton, they literally dug up the lawn to install a fake pool for the LinkedIn HQ, craning it over the top of the building into the inner courtyard.
Progress.
The villages are packed with celebrities: Lando Norris, Oprah, Shaq, Olivia Dean, Michael McIntyre (spotted outside our hotel, implausibly chipper).
Drone shows creating oversized dolphins running the length of the beach.
And, at all times, a DJ.
And the tech powerhouses work like timeshare salespeople.
You get the free goodies: the tote bag, the kombucha, the wide-brimmed chapeau.
In exchange, you need to stay for the sales pitch.
And this year, they were very clearly courting the Creators.
On the other side of the Croisette: a darkened auditorium at the Palais, a screen, and ideas so good it makes a room full of professional cynics lose their minds.
Like Columbia Sportswear’s CEO offering the entire company to any flat-earther who could photograph the edge of the earth.
Or adidas making the audience cry with ‘Supernova Adaptive’, creating bespoke running shoes for people living with Down syndrome. The host, Juan, receiving a pair for his daughter to rapturous applause.
Or the KitKat Heist; twelve tons of chocolate stolen, and instead of a crisis, they built a Stolen KitKat Tracker and turned disaster into a cultural moment.
You can't buy that kind of engagement
“You can’t buy that kind of engagement,” said one commentator.
Exactly.
The tech villages are genuinely impressive.
People move through them wide-eyed, a little dazzled, taking in the spectacle, the celebrity, the excess of it all.
But what I noticed was that while people may look at the tech villages, they really feel the awards shows.
There’s a difference between awe and emotion, and only one of them builds a brand.
One quietly telling observation: despite all the conversation about AI and emerging technology, relatively little of the awarded work actually had AI front and centre.
The ideas that won were still, stubbornly, ideas.
As one Jury President said: “Technology can accelerate change, but creativity is what gives it direction.”
Cannes needs both sides of this marriage.
The tech villages pay for the party and push the industry to ask harder questions about what’s possible.
The awards show reminds everyone what any of it is actually for.
🦁