The Cannes Debate: what is sport's place at the 'Festival of Creativity'?

0:04James Emmett:Hello and welcome to The Can Debate, a three-part series from us at Leaders on sport's new place in the media and marketing ecosystem. My name's James Emmett. I'm the Editorial Director at Leaders. And my name's Alex Charkham. I head up strategy and consulting at Fuse. Together, over the course of this series, Alex and I will be asking why and how sport has taken a central position in brand marketing and communications. What are the evolving trends that should see sport dominate the marketing agenda? And what's the point of can for the sports industry? Hello, Alex. How are you doing? Hello, hello.

0:41Good. Really good to be here and excited to break my can cherry.

0:45James Emmett:Well, indeed. Yeah. I mean, we are talking now. We're recording the first in this series, which we're co-hosting. Thanks for coming aboard in the co-hosting position. Pleasure to be co-host. We're dressing this up, Alex. Obviously, this is about, you know, sport moving into the brand world, sport becoming a much more central, dominant concept and vertical within the media and marketing industry. But really, this is a series about Cam, isn't it? Absolutely. This is a series about you going to Cam. Yeah, we're just going to have a drone following me around with a camera. Sure. And no rights restrictions on that in Cannes.

1:19James Emmett:Apparently not. We could do that. Yeah. We are going to be talking across the course of three episodes, a few different angles on this question around sport. There is the whole sport becomes a business. Now I think we're at the sort of sport becomes a multimodal brand. And we're going to be talking to various interesting people across the course of the next few weeks in and around Cannes, the Cannes Festival of Marketing and Creativity, all about their angle on that topic. And we've got quite the guests today. Kenny and Anne Jonathan is going to be coming in to join us. Kenny is the founder and CEO of his own agency, does a bit of everything, including player representation and creative storytelling, sports marketing.

2:02James Emmett:The agency is called The Mail Room. He's also the creative director at Crystal Palace. There was a big Splash when he joined Palace a few years ago as the first creative director in the Premier League. And he still does both of those things and has a new role this year as the sports director at Cannes Lion, putting together the all new sports specific program at Cannes, which is why it's relevant for this particular episode. So look forward to having him in shortly. But Alex, you mentioned it there. It's your Cannes debut. Well, first of all, why haven't you been there before. You're a man who works in the marketing industry and has done for some time.

2:37Why haven't I been? I think it's, I guess it's just because there's not necessarily been a need.

2:41James Emmett:Sure. There's never really a need. No, I think so. I think it's just been a few sort of selected few within the group that kind of go every year and do what they do. And it's always felt a little bit nebulous, but also sort of exciting what's under the bonnet and what really happens down there. I still kind of can't really picture it, to be honest, but I'm super excited to go and see what I can take and put it back into my day job. Before we welcome Kenny to the studio, give us a very quick primer on your role and responsibility at Fuse. You wear a couple of hats there and specifically where you sit in the sports world and what your real focuses are.

3:19So my background is primarily in the world of sports sponsorship, to put it really simply. And my job is to help our clients within Omnicom Group, but also outside, navigate that world and figure out where they should be playing in the world of sport and how they should be showing up, which is just as important in a way, which means that they can grow their brands and their business and specifically make their sports investments measurable and attributable and see how it compares and contrasts with whatever else they're doing in the world of advertising and marketing.

3:48James Emmett:And would you consider yourself to be a creative? No. Okay. My background is more in strategy. So really getting under the skin of how sport works from a commercial partnership perspective, understanding how to guide our clients through the variety of options, platforms, properties, rights, activation. There is a kind of creative component in there, but generally leave that a little bit to go a little bit more sort of downstream as and when their clients are up and running and need that support to deliver their campaigns. I guess my job is to tee it up and let the creatives dunk it, really. Yeah, great.

4:22And basketball analogy. Perfect.

4:24James Emmett:So this is your CAN debut. You're going to be out in force with the Omnicom crew, the Fuse crew. You've got a space, have you? We do. We have the Omnicom Cove, which quite excited. It's going to be a big space where it's all going to happen. The great and the good are coming from across the world alongside a raft of clients, a few agenda as well as a huge agenda. We're going to be talking a lot more about sports at the Cove, more so than we've done in years gone by. And yeah, hopefully be playing a part in that alongside some colleagues. Okay, fantastic. And we're going to be talking to a few people as trailed, Kenny and and Jonathan today, but then we've got some exciting guests penciled in for future episodes.

5:05James Emmett:We're going to be recording one during Cannes itself, you and I. Yes. We won't give the game away on precisely who the guest is, just in case we have to pivot and get a different one. Correct. Yeah, it's distinctly possible. So we'll be recording one in Cannes, and then we'll be recording one immediately after Cannes. So we've got the preview, the mid and the review. can becoming a much more significant destination and event on the b2b side of sports we've seen that over the course of the last few years so it's worth sort of unpacking it and examining it in detail if nothing else to get some some tips for you as a as a newcomer so to help us do that let's bring in kenny and ann jonathan the sports director at the can lion festival and joining us now in the studio as trailed is kenny annan jonathan kenny how you doing i am good on this rainy london day it's not very can today it's not very can at all no not very can at all um right question for both of you now which is a spin on a traditional question in can and you'll find this out alex it's a bit of a blur there are so many people there are so many people in and around the space that you operate in, but not necessarily exactly in your sphere.

6:18James Emmett:And you're meeting hundreds of people a day. How do you and how are you going to introduce yourself when you're in Cannes in order to make an impact and sum up pretty much exactly what it is you do? Kenny, I'm going to come to you first with this because you are a multi-hyphenate individual. Yeah. How are you introducing yourself at Cannes? Well, for me, I'm there on a mission. So I guess ideally, my role there is to be the sport director for the festival. So I'm there to liaise, to network, to build, to make sure people feel comfortable and have an understanding of, you know, what the festival is about as a whole, but where, you know, the sport vertical that we've built kind of really, like what the energy around it is and just making sure that people know that.

7:07the value that we have in there is so much that you can take out.

7:10James Emmett:And then when people say, oh, that's interesting, Kenny, how did you get into this? See, now you're taking us down the rabbit hole. That's when the floodgates open. Yeah. And then you start crying. Because then I've got to go down my whole history. But yeah, I guess ideally it's just more about explaining like my journey, like, you know, coming into, you know, the sporting space, running my own agency, which I still do by the name of the mailroom, managing athletes, and then finding my way by commercial partnerships, strategic alignment, social media management, and just having a real love and understanding and passion always sounds like a bit of a buzzword, but just, I guess, the want and need to explore new spaces and answer questions that I usually ask but never answered.

8:01And whatever that looks like going into those sectors, that's what it is. And then I guess the evolution of it from having my own agency, managing athletes, to my own production company, Media House, to creative director at Crystal Palace, to then my current role and all the other things. You bring up your bona fides.

8:19James Emmett:I like it. Alex, how are you going to do it? I think for me, I'm going to have a couple of hats on, which might make it a little bit easier. Physical hats? Physical hats, where it's going to be 35 degrees, isn't it? Need to cover the bonds and that weather. look I think from our side being part of Omnicom we're going to be going big this year from a sport perspective obviously with the coming together with IPG means that we've got a lot of sport expertise under the roof a lot of it will be internal we've got Omnicom Cove a lot going on we've got some big hitters coming from across the business loads of clients are going to be there so I think for me it's about clear and consistent articulation of what we can do and what we can bring to the party and then from a client perspective of course there's always going to be those conversations, whether it's existing clients who are already involved in the space or trying to work with clients, I think, to convince them to think about sport more prominently for reasons that we'll discuss.

9:09Yeah.

9:09James Emmett:Well, let's get stuck in then. Who goes to Cannes? And Kenny, you're a Cannes veteran, are you? How many times have you been? Yes, so now. I've been going for about eight years now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely veteran status. And obviously, Alex, as part of the Omnicom group, if you haven't necessarily been individually, obviously the group is sort of central to you. Yeah. Yeah. Who goes to Cannes now it always used to be thought of as a as an advertising festival right as a place for ad folk you know account managers creatives to go and you know celebrate their work um but now I think it's a much broader church right what types of people go to Cannes and then to extend that out what type of sports people go to Cannes Kenny we'll start with you well definitely an interesting one because I think you know when we talk about advertising and marketing like the evolution over the years has you know grown so much and the meaning has has changed so much like from what a traditional you know advertiser or a marketer looks like and what they do and the hats that they wear I guess when I first started um going to Cannes I was first brought out there um by the Players Tribune um and I was brought out with Mikel Antonio one of my clients and there wasn't a sports presence at all, but they saw an opportunity to have a presence in and amongst a community of people that have offerings to the intersection of sport, naturally as an outlet.

10:41Over the years, I guess now, seeing the evolution of the people that go there and now having a sport vertical, you have to remember the wider festival has so many different offerings. So even if you're not directly involved in sport, there is something or some category that has some segue into sport. So even if we just look at the creator economy, for instance, creator beach, which, you know, they've, this is, I think the third year now that they're, that they're building, you know, you have sports creators and even the ones that are not in sports are still contributing to the world of sports, whether that's fan engagement, whether that's, you know, being with brands and seeing how they could reach new communities.

11:26So I think the traditional means of what, of who goes there, when we talk about advertising and marketing, it, you know, the world has really been opened up now and it's like a boiling pot of people that make up the ecosystem of culture rather than just one segmented pillar.

11:45James Emmett:Yes. Do you have a view on that, Alex, on the type of folks who go with your Omnicom hat on. I think historically from our side, it's been the kind of media and creative led individuals. But at the same time, you know, to your point, Kenny, I think those individuals have also got experience in planning and activating around sport. A lot of our clients are sort of shared across the group, some in media, some in creative, some in sport. And I think the most successful and strong campaigns that emanate from a sports sponsorship are the ones where creative media and sport kind of come together as expertise.

12:20So I think it makes sense for me now that all of this is coming to the fore more. Of course, sport partnerships in particular have always been around. They've always been prominent. We're about to go into another World Cup where you can already see the depth of activity that some of the big hitters globally are doing. I think for some reason, perhaps it's always been viewed as living in somewhat of a silo away from mainstream media and creative. But I think for reasons that we'll always say come on to talk about. sport is very much front and center in front of mind.

12:49James Emmett:And just from my perspective, having been the last few years, I've definitely noticed an increase in the number of sort of pure sports folks attending or sports adjacent folks. And it does seem to me that there is increasingly this sort of wider business ecosystem around sport that is present there in some way, shape or form. Obviously, the big kind of marketing, advertising agencies and all that kind of offshoot activation, you know, specific functional agencies that might service sport are there. Fuse, of course, and plenty more. But then you're seeing increasing number of rights holders. So pure sports rights holders, and we'll come on to how you're working with those folks as well.

13:32James Emmett:But Sama Al-Khassab from Wimbledon has been going for years. And people like him, folks who lead marketing and commercial at rights holders and then sort of a little bit further down the chain on the sales side there because it is known to be a place where all sorts of brand representatives are it's a happy hunting ground for networking with potential sponsorship buyers but then increasingly you're seeing sort of wider ecosystem in play broadcasters are there and sort of people who have an influence over rights buying away from sponsorship. A lady called Ros Durant was there last year. She's a very influential person inside ESPN.

14:18James Emmett:She's someone who makes a lot of decisions on huge media rights buying decisions. And she's there. And all the other broadcasters are there. Netflix have a huge sort of presence there. And then even further up the chain, you've got mainly Americans, right? Sort of big business impresarios and owners who are drawn somehow to the glamour of the place and can be found kind of having sort of weird and wonderful dinners in and around the hills. There's definitely been a growth in the number of people who are focused on sport there. This year, Kenny, you were brought in earlier this year to crystallise that sort of for the organisation.

14:57James Emmett:One of the hats that you're wearing is the sports director for CanLion. There is now a specific CanLion sports programme on the agenda. There is a place for people to go, a hub for folks in sport. Tell us about the rationale behind that and what you've had to do to bring it to life. Even with all of our viewpoints on what it looks like and who is there, and again, someone yourself who's been attending the festival for a number of years, there's always been people directly involved in sport at the festival. But now we have a place for all of those conversations and relationships to live. And I think that's the main thing because traditionally what would happen is people would come just as we described and they would have their meetings and just use this time to meet with like their agencies, their partners, and go and see a few talks and try and build some new relationships, which has always been great.

15:53But then there was also a lot of independent things that were happening. But one of the only other issues with that is that it's very segmented so if you're not in the know-how then you might not have access so who I like to call my partner in in crime which is Sophie Godfrey she had the the idea to present to the team that look our data shows this is what's happening at the festival and there is a real need for you know lions to own a piece of IP for as we said the conversations to live at that point where she had thought about it and presented it I think everyone was in agreeance the next stage was about finding someone to then build what that vertical looks like and that's where I then come in yeah I think the good viewpoint for me is that outside of being really excited about seeing this thing being built out I am also the target audience so I get to answer the questions that have been asked for many years what does that look like as I said from the top as we said, like the C-suite, like rights holders, broadcasters, you know, you name it, like the marketeers, advertisers that are coming and turning up and what are the conversations that we need to have that will encapsulate those people whereby they feel that the value add is there in can with intention where they can say, okay, we've been coming and doing our own thing.

17:13But now what we're doing, trying to run around and build these relationships, there's this hub where all of that sits in one place. And I guess ideally, that's what, you know, Lion Sport is about. Can I ask, in terms of like planning the schedule and the agendas, there's obviously so much noise and so many themes jumping around from AI, the creator economy. How do you go about navigating sort of through that to really distill down an awesome agenda? No, honestly, that is the tricky part. Because I think for everything that you probably think of, there's like 10 others. There's a call of content that went out even before I had joined early this year.

17:47and at that point when and maybe let's just let's call this around February to see the amount of applications and for the first time that Lions Sport was had ever been announced across the whole festival actually Lions Sport took up a huge percentage of the call for content which is telling number one so as I said maybe for like every one panel discussion or whatever it would be there's x amount of you know people putting in you know their submissions and there's a huge appetite that people wanted to tell sports massive yeah and you can only imagine because the festival still you know hold such value within you know its ecosystem you can imagine the types of individuals agencies athletes that are opting in so it's hard because you could see a name you're Like this is amazing, but it might not necessarily be the right fit for now.

18:42And I think trying to make those decisions and being very intentional with those decisions is a tricky part. But I think we've got a great team. I think, you know, the content team who obviously have experience with the audiences at Cannes, but then with my shared expertise externally bringing in and saying, I have an ear to the ground of, you know, I guess what the conversations, you know, what needs to be had and what people are looking for. And somewhere in between those, we find a common grounds where we can serve as to the best of what we can, but it's still year one.

19:17James Emmett:So yeah, I think that's a brilliant flag for what this series is all about. The fact that, you know, submissions for content, you know, content opportunities that can in the sports category far outweigh first year, far outweigh any others. It's exactly what we're talking about in this series, sport moving much more centrally into the kind of wider marketing media ecosystem. And Alex, I wonder what your view is at this point, and it might change as we go through the series. What does that tell us? What does, what Kenny just said there, tell us about sport's role in a wider kind of media and marketing?

19:54Yeah, it's interesting. It's definitely evolved. I think what we're sort of seeing now, and I think being in the inside of a big media agency helps with this, is that we're seeing media used to be you know they'll kill me in the media agencies were saying this but you know a straightforward thing back in the day there was four or five channels there was you know out of home there was radio but now there's just lots and it's fragmented and it's a bloody nightmare to sort of plan in and around it but what we're seeing now i think is sport is one of the few things that commands audiences en masse and we're seeing the advertising economy very much move towards the sports ecosystem.

20:29I think at the end of last year, something like 30 % of all advertising spend was around sports programming, which is very, very significant, I think.

20:38James Emmett:As in ads placed next to sports programming or thematically, the advertising was about sports? The former. Okay. The former. So it's commanding a significant chunk of media spend. And we're also seeing things like television sponsorship being massively inflated at the moment. Again, so it's those bumpers that sort of bookmark a particular program. And I think working in the inside of a media agency, as I say, a lot of the brands that want to go after these slots are doing so in a sealed bid process because it's such an on-demand inventory. And sometimes those media buys are more expensive than actual sports sponsorship, as we would put it, of those particular rights holder related events.

21:18So we have this significant change going on. And I think with that becomes an evolution of lots of client questions we're getting, which is less around how we present around sports or how we part of that kind of fandom. Because I think a lot of advertisers, a lot of brands are realizing that actually, if you're immersing yourself into these spaces and contributing to the experience through IP, through rights, through content, through talent, and all of a sudden you're building a sports sponsorship ecosystem, which is much more than spots and dots. It's actually about sort of, you know, building yourself in the context of what your target audience is like doing on the weekend, really, which is a much stronger way in our view of getting noticed, getting recalled in buying situations, which is kind of at the heart of what advertising and marketing is really about.

22:03It's just it's about brand salience. And I think we're also seeing that what partnerships in particular can bring to the ecosystem is is a lot broader than I think pure media role. So the rights that you get from sports partnerships can impact multiple aspects of a client's business. Yes, there's the whole kind of outward facing communications and advertising perspective, but from employee engagement, from retailer relationships, if you're in that part of the business, through to, you know, customer journey, through to CRM, through to, you know, if you're ordering food on a food delivery system, you're already seeing delivery activating around the World Cup as well as going big on television.

22:40so once you get under the skin of it i think what a lot of clients are starting to wake up to is actually this can impact multiple parts of their ecosystem of which media is a massive part of it yeah but actually if you're looking at bringing the whole business and rallying it around a particular thing in a moment in time then sport is a fantastic way to do that i wonder what the

22:59James Emmett:key themes of can of everybody's sort of sports flavored experience at can are going to be this year and and kenny i'll lean on you to give us a view of what you hope those key themes are going to be and what what you you and your team have programmed you know there are some things that are already kind of fairly dominant in uh general discourse before we go into can you mentioned ai earlier there's a wider marketing industry thing of of consolidation you know people will be chattering about that uh around can there's the buzzwords around um authenticity still there's there will be a lot of discussion around athletes as everything, athletes as publishers, athletes as their own businesses, you know, the general trends we're seeing in sport.

23:45James Emmett:But Kenny, what are your sort of core programming verticals and give us a sense of what's coming up? Yeah, so our program's out, it's live. But, you know, just some of the, I guess some of the sessions, without going too deep into it and giving everything away, but just, you know, the essence around them. I think naturally one around storytelling and creativity is going to be front and center, because I think it hits a few different metrics for most organizations, no matter what department that you sit in. You know, how do you reach communities through the art of storytelling, the right activations, hitting the heartstrings of people through so many different ways?