Cannes Lions—a.k.a. The International Festival of Creativity—will wrap up this weekend. The eight-day festival drew about 15,000 people from communications, marketing, entertainment, design and tech to show off and soak up standout work from last year. With the awards handed out and the cork back in the rosé, what will ZEITGUIDE remember most from our week in the south of France?

Brand Safety
Legacy publishers continued to hammer away at the brand safety issue presented by user-generated content on Facebook and Google. “The world of digital advertising is a nightmarish joke,” said New York Times CEO Mark Thompson. “You couldn’t think of a more dangerous environment for a brand.” Unilever’s Keith Weed pointed out that many marketers have themselves to blame for prioritizing quantity over quality in their digital ad buys. “The cheapest media is on the lousy sites,” said Weed. “You get what you pay for. If it’s too good to be true it probably is.”

The Political Minefield
A number of brands took big swings at being part of “the conversation”—and whiffed. Pepsi’s embarrassing Kendall Jenner ad was exhibit A. As a new Edelman study came out showing that 57% of consumers are more likely to buy from or boycott a brand based on its social or political stances, the talk has turned from embracing activism to staying out of the fray. “It’s very hard to politicize. Unless it’s in the DNA of the brand, stick to what your brand is about,” suggested Dawn Hudson, chief marketing officer for the National Football League.

Belt Tightening
WPP and Dentsu Aegis were among traditional ad agencies that sent fewer staff to Cannes Lions, blaming tighter budgets. WPP boss Martin Sorrell even suggested the festival “needs to tone it down” and would be better if it was in a more accessible city like New York or London. And while a tour of superyachts docked in Cannes included adtech firms Teads, Nielsen Marketing Cloud and Rubicon, the scene in the harbor was more subdued than in years past.

Gender Equality
The Cannes Lions jury this year approached gender parity, with 43.5% of award voters women. The festival continued its “See It Be It” program in which 15 young women are sponsored to take part in networking events, curated seminars and mentorship opportunities. The Female Quotient also hosted its signature “Girls’ Lounge,” a networking spot specifically for women. Our CEO Brad Grossman joined other male leaders for a TFQ panel discussion on what men should be doing to further equality.

Creative Highlights
It has been a year of advertisements that broke the internet. Under Armour’s #Breakthegame campaign used Twitter to release three-second ads each time Stephen Curry scored a three-pointer. The ad was creative, effective and much cheaper than a TV spot during the NBA Playoffs. Another award winner was Burger King’s “Google Home of the Whopper.” The 15-second TV ad triggered any Google Home device in earshot to recite the signature burger’s ingredients. It didn’t generate exactly the output Burger King expected when pranksters stuck words “cyanide” and “rat meat” into The Whopper’s Wikipedia entry. Still, it prompted amusing conversation and news coverage, which probably sold some burgers.

Rise of Consultants
Consultancies were out in force this year, including Accenture Interactive, Deloitte, PwC, Ernst & Young and McKinsey, which have been buying up creative agencies and powering up their ad data capabilities. This rankled some ad execs, who see this convergence as a threat. “I think having consultancies there actually shows how creativity is becoming more important than ever,” said Mark Sherwood, group chief strategy officer at Imagination. “The only question is, can the consultancies allow creatives to push what is possible, to take risks, to play, to test, to learn, to unlearn, to push the possible?”

AI
The predominant conversation on many panels, including the one hosted by Brad with the Now Imperative, was AI. Another panel featured Dr. Mark Sagar, who has won Oscars for his facial motion capture work on “Avatar” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” discussing the work of his startup Soul Machines to create “digital humans” that could work as customer service reps. Other announcements included Tencent opening its AI capabilities to developers, and Omnicon announcing AUBI, an AI powered interface for facilitating better use of data by employees.

What Will Cannes be Like Next Year?
New Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun announced that his organization would be skipping Cannes and all other trade/award shows in 2018. It’s estimated the company spent $20 million to send employees to Cannes this year, money the company hopes to shift into its new AI-powered assistant focused on improving creation and collaboration for the company’s 80,000 employees across the globe, Marcel. The decision is already making waves, with Ascential, the owner of the Cannes Lions, seeing its stock drop 3.8% following the announcement.