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This year’s Cannes Lions is looking to bring humor back to advertising, but a new category celebrating funny work underpins wider concern about the creative future of an industry that is rapidly embracing the tools of artificial intelligence.
For the first time, humor will be added as a category to the annual South of France awards, which showcase the industry’s best campaigns over the past year.
Organizers are looking for examples of “wit and satire to provide entertainment and create a memorable, laugh-out-loud connection with the audience,” according to the award criteria. The festival starts on Monday.
However, this new category also reflects the underlying uncertainty of an industry undergoing a creativity crisis. Industry leaders say this will help highlight the importance of the human element in advertising, with AI struggling to create entertaining ad campaigns that mix creativity with irreverence and silliness.
“AI can produce jokes, but they’re not very funny yet,” says Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy UK. “Which I think is evidence that there’s still a lack of human connection — some level of shared understanding in AI that’s not quite there yet.”
That missing component – the importance of human creativity – will be the talk of much of the Croisette in Cannes this week as major ad agencies showcase their latest investments in artificial intelligence.
Agencies from Havas and Publicis to WPP and Dentsu will all unveil plans to adopt and integrate artificial intelligence, making the new technology central to how advertising executives plan, create and deploy campaigns.
Executives say AI technology is proving useful in creating realistic images at scale and optimizing advertising for use across platforms from social media to television and billboards.
AI has already begun to replace some jobs, insiders say, such as helping to quickly acquire images and model potential campaigns — work that used to take days can now be done in hours.
But executives also like to take advantage of the other benefits that great creative minds can bring to advertising. Humorous campaigns, executives say, can often prove more effective.
Karen Martin, head of UK advertising agency BBH, says this year could be the “return of fun”, with humor a rarer element in the advertising world than it used to be.
BBH is launching a campaign for Paddy Power this month around the Euro 2024 football tournament featuring English actor Danny Dyer, which aims to find the humor in being an England fan.
“Some of the best advertising always made you laugh,” she said, adding that it also served as a counterpoint to more sober economic, political and social issues in news and journalism. “Can advertising make you laugh in a world of permanent crisis? We lost our way a little bit.”
The introduction of the humor category also reflects a second shift in tone at this year’s Cannes, with many executives frustrated by what they see as a focus on awarding more serious and purposeful work rather than effective campaigns that better serve sales. products and brands.
According to research firm Kantar, there has been a steady decline in the use of humor in advertising over the past 20 years, with the pandemic accelerating that decline. This slippage occurred despite the fact that humor is “the most powerful creative enhancer of receptivity,” says Kantar, being more expressive, engaging, and distinct.
Simon Cook, chief executive of Cannes Lions, the event’s organizer, agreed that there had been a return to the use of humor in this year’s campaigns after several years of “more serious, grimmer” work.
Many of the most recognizable ads in this year’s Super Bowl — a banner opportunity for the creative advertising industry — tried to use humor.
“Humor works,” Cook said. “This year we will see a continued renaissance of humor. The kinds of stupidity, insanity, and irreverence that we would expect from human creativity.”
“There is a move towards efficiency,” said Miranda Hipwell, CEO of adam&eveDDB, with marketing chiefs under pressure to show their boards the value of creative campaign spend.
“Advertising has been trying to make people cry for a while now. But making them laugh can be just as effective,” Hipwell said. “Whatever the emotion, campaigns must show results, not just be targeted.”
However, she also warned how difficult it is to be “globally funny” because not all regions find the same things humorous.
It can also prove divisive given how subjective humor can be, as witnessed last week in a short film released by advertising agency Publicis featuring many of the world’s leading AI experts and advertising executives.
Publicis chief Arthur Sadoun described in an email a “not-so-serious film” about the artificial intelligence hype at Cannes, with some of those featured in the film failing to see the funny side, according to advertising executives.