We Went to Cannes Lions (What You Need to Know)

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Freshly back from La Cote d 'Azur. Joshua, you look so tan, fresh from can. Did you see what I just did there? This is amazing. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but thank God you were there for the both of us. Josh, I am so excited. I haven't even gotten your updates yet. I am going to get them as the kids get them. So tell us, tell us about Can. I think the number one talked about topic at Cannes this year, Lauren, was how hot it was. Oh, yeah. No, it was like I've heard. I did hear that.

0:37That it's like a heat wave and there's no air conditioning in France and Europe in general. They don't do that. Thank God. Whoever invented mini splits should win a Nobel Peace Prize because they're amazing. So that was the main topic of conversation running around the class. By the way, last year when I was going to crash with you at Cannes, you were like, that's fine. but I get the room with the mini split. You were like, I don't do no air conditioning when I'm sleeping. It's 100%. Great. I'm a boy from Tucson, Arizona. That's what I mean. I'm from Florida. I understand. Go on. But you know what was reassuring to know in that heat?

1:14It was like low 90s, mid 90s with some unbearable amount of like 300 % humidity or something. Sure. I saw Alex Rodriguez. I saw David Ortiz. I saw Bryson DeChambeau. I saw Oprah. I say I saw Hoda. And let me guess, they were all sweating? All sweating. All sweating. I knew every one of them. Every single person. It's not like they weren't sweating. Like, turns out everybody sweats. It turns out everybody sweats. Like, did somebody have more lip sweat than others? Was somebody like pit sweating more? You don't have to name names. But like, I'm just saying, like, were there variations to the sweater?

1:46Everybody was just like drenched. Everybody was pretty much drenched. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You just had to embrace it. Yeah. What are you going to do? And Lauren, the second hottest topic of conversation I can outside the heat was obviously something near and dear to your, my heart. Creators. Oh, sure. Yeah. Tell me more. So last year, just to recap last year, I think you and I came away being like, sure, everybody's like down with creators and wants to talk about it. But it wasn't like it didn't feel like a creator conference. It felt like a word people were using in order to feel relevant in a lot of ways.

2:16What was it like this year? I want to get into that and I want to answer your question. But first I want to frame it with Matt Bellamy, who is a Puck founding partner and he's the host of The Town, which is this really well-liked, respected Hollywood industry podcast. The Town was also a main like kind of tertiary player in the studio. It was a running theme throughout the Seth Rogen Apple series that Matt Bellamy would be listened to on the radio. And then he actually made an appearance in one of the final episodes. So he's an influential dude that other people in Hollywood like. He is. But I will say I am actually I really love his podcast and it just makes me feel like I know what I'm talking about in a very deep Hollywood way.

3:00But they did an episode recently on clipping. And it's really funny to hear people that are not deep in our sort of industry talk about things as if they like started yesterday and like they're this new phenomenon. And oh, my God, we're all being manipulated by the Internet as if that's like a new thing. It's actually it's it's it's amazing. Go on. Agree. And here's what he said in a recent newsletter because people were asking him if he's at Cannes. And so he responded with this, quote, Cannes is the Festival de Cannes, a prestigious global film event where talented creative people display and sell their work and look glamorous doing so.

3:32Cannes Lions is not. It's a tacky business conference for selling advertising and announcing brand partnerships populated mostly by paunchy middle managers and YouTubers. They called an international festival of creativity, but that's just to make the suits and the media people feel better about their soulless corporate boondoggle. Enjoy the rosé. Oh, and you're there. Are you were you there for that corporate soulless boondoggle? I was. Sign me up. I get what he's saying. But he was at this can or he was not. He wasn't a can. Oh, he wasn't a can. And he was like, maybe I'll be at can the festival, the film festival can.

4:08But I'm not at this can lions. And like, I get where he's coming from, but he also is this like Hollywood guy looking down at the creator economy feels like the same way film looked down at TV in 1955. Yep. And the boondoggle he's mocking is this exact scene where I think shifts in ideas around how to move billions of dollars in marketing per year are actually happening. This is where CMOs and decision makers go to and they get inspired by their peers, hear from others in the ecosystem. And that translates into strategy that has a direct effect on huge sums of money that are flowing through the marketing ecosystem.

4:49And so basically he's describing this ecosystem that he thinks is tacky without realizing that this is the one that's actually like moving a ton of markets. And it's growing, yeah. And it's growing and it's becoming more and more important. Also, this podcast that you and I both like and listen to is advertiser supported. Come on, bro. Are you suggesting that people in Hollywood are hypocrites? Is that what you're suggesting, Joshua? I just think he could look a little bit more into this ecosystem. I'm just wondering. Is that what you're suggesting? Yes. Okay. So tell us how it actually was when you were there.

5:21Lauren, this was the 73rd iteration of Cannes Lions. And again, originally started as, to Matt Bellini's point, a festival celebrating the creative of advertising. And because all the creatives went out there for this festival because they like to win awards and it was a cool place that was honoring them. Then all of their teams started to come around and the CMOs started to come around. And then publishers and people that want to court these CMOs and brands started to come around to be next to them for the exposure. So they could wine and dine them and tell them to spend millions of dollars a year on their platforms.

5:53This is the third year that Cannes Lions has had a creator track. Tubefilter has been the media partner with the creator track for all three years. And the biggest shift, I think, is what you kind of alluded to up top, that it used to feel like creators were also at this event. Creators were also being talked about. Where this year, it really just felt like a creator event. and creators used to go to can three years ago four years ago five years ago and more to fulfill brand deals and sponsor obligations they're being contracted to go out there for a specific purpose so they could take uh tiktoks at spotify events and then show how cool these spotify events were and now they're going there to create all these opportunities and sign these deals and really influence how this ecosystem when they say ecosystem i don't just mean this creator space, but like marketing and advertising writ large are moving forward and into the future.

6:48I think one of the things that sums this up the most too is Scott Galloway and Kara Fisher did a live pivot taping at Ad Week House. And here's what Scott said, quote, the industry hasn't yet recognized they're no longer the protagonist. And that was in reference to creators. And this is what Kara Swisher said. When I used to come here, Maurice Levy, Martin Sorrell, John Wren, they owned the Quasette. These are all like old scions of the ad holding company industry, Publicis, WPP, and Omnicom. Now it's some creator who's talking about food. But she's also, by the way, she's some creator who's talking about the industry, and she's also one of the leaders in the space.

7:29She wasn't saying that disparagingly. She was saying that cheekily, but that's like where this ecosystem is going and how it's evolved. She and Scott Galloway are leading the industry. Let's be real. Huge Scott Galloway fan, always and forever. going this hasn't necessarily been reflected in the press that's coming out of can there's this media monitoring from karma that measures the coverage uh found in publications around can lions they say that creators only occupied 18 of festival press behind fashion at 56 entertainment at 49 and ai at 38 what did you hear like the brands talking about as it relates to creators specifically one of my favorite stuff that i went to was this uh breakfast at youtube google beach And there, Sean Downey, who's president of the Americas and Global Partners at Google, he's like one of the top sales individuals over there, interviewed a few different people there.

8:16One of them was Chris Bellinger, who's the chief creative officer at PepsiCo Foods. And he said that his org, his division has restructured how they think about this marketing ecosystem. So this is what he said about the old way of working. He said, quote, the brand produces everything. And then you hire the personalities to give you leverage and authenticity. That makes sense. You make a creative ad. You put something together. You give it to creators and they pump it out to their fans and their audience. Now that doesn't work because everyone knows what it is. The new way is, quote, putting the content creators in the forefront and our brands are along for the ride instead of vice versa.

8:52He said the old model was roughly 75 % brand voice and 25 % expert. The new model is about a third brand, a third creator, and a third consumer. and one of the ways they got to this is they did this really interesting study in this study they split creators into two groups one group got a 17 page prescriptive brand brief full of talking points full of how the brand should be mentioned how it should be placed how the viewer should think about the brand once you're done speaking to them and more and another set of influencers just got the brand name and that's like and that's it yeah let me guess which did better for them Let me take a wild guess.

9:34So he said, like, by and away, far and wide, the content that is currently resonating, driving Harawai, more views, more everything is the open-ended version. And you can tell when a content creator is just waiting for a script and immediately your brain shuts off, whether it's how they speak about it, the language they use, their energy, a billion different signs that we've learned as humans to pick up for one another. Who knows? but that just happens and his bunter version was the prescriptive briefs are quote shitting the bed end quote i mean it's just funny because it's like this is an argument that you and i have been either made or seen being made for the past since the since the beginning of creator time right like just give the creators let them do their let them do the thing let them do the creative and and brands were just so nervous and terrified and i love that like it's just like they've like how everybody's just woken up like almost 20 years later being like oh so we just like can't tell them what to do we have to just let them go with it and their audience like will like that better and i understand how that is very scary it's certainly you know you know for a brand because you don't have control and historically brands really want control and understand their messaging and they don't want it to get away from them but um if you're really talking about roi this is this is the move that everybody's been talking about for years and what's cool here is that you have someone like Chris Bellinger who has this prominent position at Pepsi Foods who thinks this way, who's talking about it, who's doing studies to substantiate it as well.

11:02And so it's one thing for him to know it. It's another thing for him to do this control group versus this newfangled way of doing things that he can show to his higher ups and be like, yo, you see what we did here? Like, you got to go with me on this moving forward. And I feel like it doesn't necessarily mean that like you can't still have messaging out there that's controlled. Like there's different there's a lot of different versions of marketing and advertising out there. But if your goal is simple, like ROI, it sounds like this is probably like, you know, this is the move. You know what I mean?

11:33Yeah. He went on to iterate that they've shifted the majority of their assets and resources towards influencer management and relationships. They're moving away from this historical and traditional advertising to what they're calling new content and the creator economy. Yep. And they've launched new brands through creators. They've launched new types of flavors of their staples through creators. It seems to be going very well for them. And I think someone in their position with their kinds of brands that they operate with can be this forerunner in this space that all the other brands can look at and be like, yo, if PepsiCo Foods is doing this stuff, we've got to do the same kind of thing.

12:09All right, Josh. And then what events did you go to? Any good parties? What are we talking about? One of my favorite events was actually one of our own. And at 2Filter, we put on this roundtable discussion with ComScore. We had people from Spotter in the room, ARAC, prominent YouTube creators in the room, Courtney, her CEO of John Boy was there, some representatives from L 'Oreal, and YouTube among other platforms. And we had a great conversation about how measurement, media dollars, creators, and more can work together to bringing more of this money into this ecosystem and accomplish everybody's goals.

12:46I think one of the most interesting things that came out of that conversation was John Boyce CEO, Courtney Hirsch, has an interesting POV on how she looks at talent in the ecosystem. So she breaks it down into three things, creators, influencers, and personalities, which I haven't really heard that breakdown before. And I thought it's so simple, but makes so much sense. So creators you go to for creative work, marketing, and distribution. That's what we think about when we talk mostly about creators. Influencers, you're just going to go for them to get greater distribution on your product. And then personalities, you can use a talent in either.

13:26And I think it's this simple framework that belies this more nuanced understanding of the ecosystem that I'm going to be using moving forward. And I want to share with you all too. Well, I think there's overlap too, right? Like a creator can be an influencer, a talent can be an influencer, but they're not necessarily, you know, there are distinctions between that. I think like, you know, how much influence does a creator have, you know, and that's what we talk a lot about in terms of like, you know, engagement and how like subscriber count doesn't really matter. It's like, how can you move the needle, especially when you're talking about brands and like, what's your conversion rate, right?

13:59And then of course, there's like talent that's like, you know, you really want just for their talent and like what they can do and how they can, how they can perform and they may or may not have sort of like be able to create, they may or may not have like, you know, a ton of influence. So I like that. I like that distinction as well. So like coming out of a discussion like with Comscore and stuff like I'm imagining there were a lot of insights and a lot of really good sort of learnings from that. Like, are you guys going to be publishing those earnings in like TubeFilter? Like, how do people get that?

14:27Because that sounds like a really like great sort of room. Yeah, we're working on that and putting together some of the findings of a lot of what Comscore is doing now, too. They're really interested on showcasing the value of these creators and also proving the incremental kind of audience that they bring. So, like, Jesser has an audience of how many millions of individuals and people, tens of millions. The NBA has an audience of how many tens of millions of individuals. And there's not a lot of overlap between the two. So showcasing that and showcasing the incremental audience that Jesser can bring to someone like the NBA.

15:00Because we've usually seen it as someone like Jesser does something with the NBA. And it's good for Jesser because he's kind of like breaking out of YouTube. Right. And getting a wider audience than he normally would have. We don't generally see it the other way around. That's not how it's been framed. Historically, correct. Right. And I think putting some data behind that can showcase the actual value of these creators. And what really kind of hit home for me when I was thinking about it is if you were going to do a deal with like Jay-Z in the NBA, you wouldn't be thinking about the incremental audience that Jay-Z is going to get from being on the NBA.

15:38Right. You would think about it just from the other way around. or George Clooney or Brad Pitt or whoever, you wouldn't really think about it from that framework. And it's interesting that we do when you swap their name for a creator's name. Yeah, but more and more, I mean, see the NFL partnerships that have been happening with creators. So more and more, I think the tide is turning, the conversation is shifting. But yeah, if you just replace it with traditional stars names, then yeah, of course, you're thinking about what the brand can get. And now it's like, I think the conversation is shifting.

16:09Right. And then providing data, insights, and analysis to back that up. Lauren, also one of my pet peeves was on full display at Can. I only have one pet peeve, actually. I'm like a simple man. We know that. Go on. If anything, I'm a simple man. True. So my pet peeve is when people equate YouTube viewership or some kind of viewership metrics on YouTube or social video platforms to Nielsen ratings and what television gets. Okay. So there was a creator on stage at a YouTube event who was talking about how much viewership he gets and how like the brand and advertising ecosystem doesn't get what he does.

16:47They don't understand it yet. They're late to the game. They need to get on board. And how he gets several millions of views per each video. And the NBA finals only got 17 million views. And he's putting up an NBA finals every single day. No, he's not. He's not. No, he's not. By the way, I made that video with an actress that we used for Shane Dawson in 2012, where we did a whole video saying that his parody of the Degrassi show got more views than the Degrassi finale. I've been making that argument for 100 years. It's not actually true. It's not apples to apples. If you're looking at Nielsen television ratings, it's the average per minute audience of the broadcast.

17:38So if you look at the NBA finals and let's say that got 17 million views on Nielsen, that's an average of 17 million viewers were tuned in every minute for the two and a half hours of the game. Correct. It's not the same as a YouTube view. I mean, at a certain point, a view on Facebook was like three seconds. So if you watched a video for three seconds, that counted as a view. It's more what he should be saying is look at his overall viewership sort of like when people drop off. If he shows the whole picture and is like, listen, my viewers stay on average 80 % of my entire video, or I'm saying let's say like 10 million of his viewers stay on for the 80 % of a 20 minute long video.

18:25That's more of like an apples to apples comparison versus like I get the same amount of views. I get more. Correct. And he's saying it in the same breath where he's disparaging the advertising and brand ecosystem for not understanding the idiosyncrasies of creators. but then there's this fundamental misunderstanding that he has he's not understanding all of this measurement works nope not the same creators just do yourself a favor and then no one on no one on youtube on stage wants to correct the person that's no because youtube's like yeah it's the same it's totally the same yeah it's 100 yeah no i mean i don't think they ever say that but they're not gonna they're not like saying it's not the same they're not like saying no yeah no It also does creators a disservice by saying that because it's not true.

19:08And so then advertisers are going to be like, I don't buy that. So I think it doesn't actually benefit. And by the way, again, I've made this argument. So all in, it seems like every year, I've only been once, but Cannes is becoming more and more the place where you need to be if you're working within the creator economy and want to work with brands. Would you sort of agree with that? I think it's just like as this creator ecosystem, like when you and I first started, we thought this creator ecosystem was going to be the future of entertainment and maybe media. And it is that, but it's also obviously now the future of marketing and advertising too.

19:47Right. Right. And now it's finally, I think, taking up the space that it's actually occupying in terms of consumption and viewership in the advertising marketing world. So it's just going to be like this is what the future is. Like when television first came out after film. Like this is just the future. And the fact that all these different types of events are happening at Cannes and Cannes Embracing Creators is helping to accelerate that future. It's creating an upward shift in the trajectory of that. This thing's happening anyway because it's just where the world is going. And I think also like is, you know, in like five years, the creative, like all of these very talented sort of creative folks that are historically and just like traditional advertising are going to be like working with these creators, building this content with creators.

20:33So we're going to see some really interesting sort of creative content coming out of this. So I feel like those that are like sad about like the like the pureness of sort of advertising what it was. I feel like it's all we're getting. We're just going to get back. And if anything, it's going to be done for cheaper. And like so everybody wins. Yeah, I think we've just started to scratch the surface of what the potential is of these quote creators that you and I know. Yeah. In their creative capacities because they haven't really been given an opportunity to flex that muscle. they've been relegated to this other performance marketing part of the advertising ecosystem where they're given hundreds thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars to shill a product in their videos sometimes that shill is really creative and interesting sometimes it's not but they haven't it's not like they've been given millions of dollars to work with a brand to iterate on some idea and come up come up with something like truly innovative and inspiring that can really bring that brand to the next level and create an amazing kind of campaign that would win lions at cans.

21:36And so with the recognition that creators are now elevated to be a main part of the marketing ecosystem, I think we're just going to start to see more dollars and respect flow into them. It gives them the ability to really do creative stuff. Because if you're just looking at it at surface level, you could totally make the argument, Creators aren't that creative. The stuff they're putting together for brands is no bueno. It's okay. But look at the stuff the advertising ecosystem is doing. It's amazing. Creators just haven't been given the same opportunity yet. Right. Yes, exactly. Okay, Josh, let's get to uploads and downloads.

22:12You've done enough talking. Really quickly, Facebook has bringing back the creator studio. It's reimagined as, guess what? But an AI-powered companion app that shows you exactly how to grow on Facebook and makes connecting with your community easier than ever. One of the things that I think is really interesting about this, you can imagine what this looks like. You're going to get insights. You're going to get, you know, Creator Studio will know your voice, audience, and goals from the minute you first open it because AI is a part of the apps foundation, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things that I think is kind of to note here that seems like an obvious sort of feature that they should have is that the professional dashboard inside of Facebook historically was just like a page was a page and pages were set up on Facebook for like businesses and brands.

23:01They weren't set up for creators. So like for a very long time, it was like creators were trying to like sort of square peg round hole and use these tools for their benefit. But now the professional dad's dashboard inside of Facebook app is going to serve both creators and businesses and it's going to have their own experience. So when you log in, you're going to see like, are you a business or are you a creator? And then each of those experiences is going to be designed specifically for an audience that's more streamlined for that kind of, you know, whatever company, creator, whatever that you are.

23:28And I know that that seems like an obvious kind of thing that they should have been doing. And I think there's been iterations of this before, but I don't think that people, you know, kind of appreciate the fact that, you know, Facebook was in no way, shape or form. It was not a video app to start. It wasn't, it was, you know, pages were sort of brought on because of advertising needs for businesses. And then creators started like posting on them in videos and it was all sort of like building the planes that were flying it. And so this is, I think, one of the more notable kind of, you know, features here.

23:57So Lauren, you were there at Facebook as any person who's listened to creator upload for more than 15 seconds knows. Sure. It seems like this is the fundamental issue with Facebook's inability to really like grab a strong foothold with creators in this ecosystem because it wasn't originally developed for any of this yeah i mean i think that that's fair to say um i think that they've been it's just that if you think about facebook in general like in the blue app which is the main sort of experience is trying to you know it's one of those things where it's trying to serve everybody therefore you're serving nobody kind of a vibe um i can remember when we did one of our first creator kind of call it summits i don't know what they call it but we did like an event when we invited a bunch of creators and they were trying really hard and fiji simo got on stage at the time she's now like i don't know she was ceo of instacart i think she's at open ai now but she was the head of video at the time and she got up there and she literally i think pitched something like 17 different video facebook creator features and all these creators afterwards were like what are we supposed to do like so there's been these like moments where they've been like we're gonna do everything for you guys and but then it's been very like i don't know i don't get it and then and then they pulled back on that.

25:05And then, you know, I remember the person in marketing who first launched Facebook for creators, like the website. And I remember it was like, she was like writing a copy and then we'd have meetings and she'd be like, does this make any sense or whatever? And she did. There was not a lot of like sort of support for this. It was like one person building this website and she like pushed and, you know, kind of like clawed her way to get that launched. And this is like, you know, this is now the like probably 20 of that sort of website experience. And that's in contrast to Neil Mohan, CEO of YouTube, who says, we want to build the best stage possible.

25:40And everything flows from that. Yeah. And it's just Facebook has many conflicting interests. So it's like, you know, you're never going to get. I mean, this is why there's been many stops and starts with Facebook and Meta trying to start their like sort of separate apps. There was the, you know, IGTV was its own app. Um, not, you know, recently there was, there's the announcement for instance, which apparently is a dedicated companion app to Instagram, um, designed for sharing unedited real time everyday moments with close friends, also known as Snapchat. So there's been a lot of sort of like, you know, trying to sort of separate and make its own curated experience, which on paper sounds really good, but it's very, it's very difficult to start a new app as it turns out, even if you're Instagram and Facebook.

26:21Yeah. They've seemed to make it work with threads. so now maybe they think they can do it for other components of this ecosystem too. Yeah, it might be time. It might be ready. Lauren, quick upload from me. So Netflix just picked up a Hot Ones spinoff. Hot Ones, the famous show from First We Feast. I love that show. It's so good. I said to my husband the other day, I was like, I want to have a party and I want to be interviewed and do Hot Ones. And then he proceeded to tell me that I would last for one wing because I have zero tolerance for spicy food. But I'm obsessed. I just watched the Jesse Eisenberg one.