We are a tone-deaf business sometimes. Consider the following unrelated facts. One, advertising is not trusted or liked by most consumers. Two, we are facing an unprecedented upheaval in the media available to advertisers, who owns these media, and how they\u2019re used. Three, the debate on how to assess the value of the different media choices, singly and in combination is a live one. Four, the main industry protagonists have just spent a large chunk of change entering for and \u2018attending\u2019 the annual Cannes festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
I wonder which of these four the agency world considers the most important of these as defined by where they spend their own money? Here\u2019s a clue, it isn\u2019t media structures, audiences and measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most years for the last dozen or so, I\u2019ve helped with the annual asi audience measurement conference. This event has been going for over 30 years and is (most would agree) the best of its type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This particular event and others like it help set the agenda when it comes to defining what the industry needs from measurement. As a for-instance, it was at an asi event that Phil Smith of ISBA unveiled his organisation\u2019s Project Origin cross media initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asi regularly attracts high calibre speakers, from David Wheldon to Bob Hoffman, from senior measurement figures from Facebook and Google to leading broadcasters and research agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet the one group that is hardest to attract as attendees, year in, year out is the agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve asked my agency friends why they don\u2019t attend events like this. Certainly, no event has a God-given right to an audience, so maybe (I\u2019ve wondered) the organisers are missing the hot topics? Or maybe they should rethink the format or the content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer is always \u2018we don\u2019t have the budget\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet mysteriously these same agencies have the budget to swarm all over Cannes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year\u2019s Cannes was naturally virtual. I don\u2019t know what it cost to \u2018attend\u2019 or access but the entry fees for papers or campaigns are revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, I make it that Cannes handed out 44 sets of awards across 28 categories, which led the incomparable Bob Hoffman (author of the AdContrarian blog) to make the clearly outrageous and patently unbelievable claim that he once met someone who hadn\u2019t won at Cannes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cost of entering varied by category between \u20ac985 and \u20ac2,450. Most seemed to be around \u20ac1,150 before any discounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Per entry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there\u2019s the cost in a usual year of showing up. I wouldn\u2019t like to estimate the annual cost of sending a delegate, once expenses are taken into account, but the whole shebang must cost an agency holding group something way into the high 6 figures, maybe even \u20ac millions; and an impoverished media agency somewhere between \u20ac25,000 and \u20ac50,000, assuming they don\u2019t go too crazy with the entries, or the rose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopefully someone will correct me on these numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m certainly not against awards (I can\u2019t be, I\u2019ve entered a fair few, won some and judged many more) nor do I think it\u2019s in any way a bad thing to come together to celebrate creativity \u2013 but do we really think that much of that happens at Cannes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cannes used to be an ad agency festival. Then clients started showing up, and major ad tech vendors, and smaller ad tech vendors, and media agencies, and traditional media houses and research agencies and software houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These days it\u2019s about as much a \u2018celebration of creativity\u2019 as this blog. And more expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Cannes is holding a mirror up to and celebrating creativity then to be frank there\u2019s not a huge amount to celebrate at the moment, judging by consumer reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What it is (Cannes I mean, not this blog) is a huge party, a demonstration of old-style excess leavened by the odd award ceremony and (judging by the approved photos released for PR purposes) some Very Serious Meetings that naturally couldn\u2019t possibly take place under any other circumstances (\u2018You\u2019ll never get such a group together, except in a beautiful waterfront setting or on a yacht\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it\u2019s that important I expect a way could be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meantime the industry, and in particular the agency side of the industry can\u2019t afford to come together to discuss what media measurement is required to equip us for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I can think of a way of solving that one. Maybe send a few less people to Cannes; maybe enter a few less awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n