[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age. Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. A couple weeks ago, the advertising and communications industry gathered on the beaches of Cannes for the Cannes Lions
[00:00:25] Festival of Creativity. In addition to celebrating the best creative work of the past year, there are executives from around the industry connecting to figure out what's next. Our own Lauren Livak Gilbert was part of that throng and she returned with some great insights we
[00:00:41] just had to share. So I put her in the hot seat for a change. So this is unprecedented. For the first time, I believe, Lauren Livak Gilbert is our guest on the podcast. I'm going to
[00:00:56] just pepper her with questions about her time at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last week. I feel like that needs reverb. It does. How was France? It was amazing. I officially want
[00:01:09] to live in the south of France. So that is the verdict. That's so surprising. You know, when you told me you were going to the to the festival through a kind invitation from our partners at
[00:01:21] WPP, we're so grateful. I immediately of course looked up the word boondoggle in the dictionary. But I must say, after hearing your after action report, I forgave you for not taking me. And I just wanted to just like I said, just find out what happened there. It
[00:01:39] sounds like such an amazing conference. Tell us about it. Yeah, it was. And just for some some context around the conference because I had a little bit of context going in. But for those that aren't familiar with
[00:01:50] Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, it really started as a festival of creativity. It focuses on creativity and marketing. And all of the marketers, top marketers across the world come there. And it's really centered around the Lions awards. So they give out awards for the
[00:02:07] best creative. And that all happens at the main conference at the Palisade. And over the years, it grew to be much more than just marketing and creative and expanded to the beach, which is next to the conference center. And that's where it really kind of
[00:02:24] exploded. And you saw all of the big names in tech and commerce and retail really set up shop there and have content and have great speakers and celebrities and just so much going on all at
[00:02:37] once. So it's more than just the conference itself, and it's really expanded to be commerce and retail media focused. And so you saw a really big shift happen over the past couple of years where I think Amazon was really the first retailer to have a big
[00:02:53] presence at Cannes. And then this year, there was Kroger and Instacart, Walmart, you had big tech like Metta, Microsoft, Google, they were all along the beach area. And that's where most of the brands and technology leaders and partners and agencies really spend a lot of
[00:03:10] their time. And I mean, it must have been for you just an exciting sort of mix of people to be in because that's kind of where the DSI is, is focused. Yeah, because so much of that
[00:03:28] industry is shifting right now, the budgets are shifting, the organizational structures are shifting like everything's in motion and everyone's following the money to a certain degree. And I'm imagining that's what a lot of the conversations are about. Yes. And I think the beauty of
[00:03:43] Cannes and the value that it drives is every single company, whether it's a brand retailer, agency partner, their executive leadership team is there. So you're bumping in, I literally bumped into someone like physically bumped into them on the sidewalk and they ended up being a
[00:04:00] CEO of a tech company like that you just are able to connect with people at a different level than you are anywhere else. And that's really the draw. And to your point, all the conversations are happening in collaboration with brands, retailers, partners and agencies
[00:04:15] at tech. And I don't think I've ever been to a conference where they're all together having joint conversations and really at that level. Exactly. At that level. I mean, I sat in panels where
[00:04:28] they were talking about retail media 3.0 and it was a brand retailer and a partner talking about how they were going to better work together to define that. And that was just a really incredible experience because these are the conversations like, you know, Peter, we need
[00:04:44] to start having because if we're all working separately, we're not going to win. We all need to collaborate together and the content and the conversations and the collaboration is really, I think, the huge value of Cannes. When you said that, that really retail media
[00:05:00] and commerce are in some, no, I don't want to overstate it. I don't know whether they're transforming the conference. Obviously, the focus is still on creativity. But a lot of that creativity now is happening in new channels, in new formats and things like that. And that
[00:05:15] it took a center stage at the conference. So walk us through a little bit of what you heard. Yeah, I mean, the obvious themes were there. We talked about AI. There's every conversation I think AI came up, talked about retail media networks and how that was changing.
[00:05:31] But I think the theme that I kind of pulled from it across any presentation I went to, whether it was from a brand or retailer or technology, was that everybody's kind of taking their blinders off. And they're really trying to think about how they can either break down
[00:05:47] silos in their operational process, break down silos in their organization, or better collaborate together to be able to have a more consumer focused approach to commerce. Because having retail media and commerce be at the center, a lot of the conversation was around how do we get
[00:06:06] closer to the consumer? How do we better understand how they're shopping, when they're shopping, where they're shopping, and what we can give to them at the right time to be able to do that.
[00:06:17] And so that theme kind of ran across every session I went to, whether it was a small brand who was trying to figure out like how do we be more bold even though we have a really small budget
[00:06:30] and think about breaking down the conventional walls of marketing to big brands who were talking about needing to create shared goals for all their different functions to make sure everybody's working towards commerce versus just siloed in in store and online. So it really kind of ran
[00:06:49] the gamut from really small companies to larger companies and retailers as well. Yeah, I'm thinking one because no one ever invited me to go to camp. I'm not sure that this is the case but I'm imagining that in earlier days when so much of creativity was poured
[00:07:09] into mass media campaigns, big TV, you know like that I would imagine because the consumer has you know now they have so many channels that they rely on throughout their journey that it's not so simple anymore to make that happen and to be able to show up
[00:07:32] creatively across every place the consumer wants and have it all meshed together into a cohesive message. So I'm imagining when you talk about taking the blinders off, it's like let's stop pretending that all of these folks can operate in silos and end up
[00:07:53] with anything that's coherent and performative with the consumer. Is that? A thousand percent, very well said. I mean I think the consumer is the one you change the conference right because you can't think in a silo anymore because the consumers
[00:08:07] aren't shopping in a silo and one of my favorite quotes from the one of the presentations I sat in was that everything and nothing has changed in marketing and I think that sums it up so well
[00:08:18] when you think about creativity and the channels that we're operating on. Creativity is still really important content is super important. You still need to build a brand, you need to
[00:08:28] surprise and delight your consumer but the way that you do that and the channels that you do that on are changing and you need to have operational excellence to be able to do that and that comes
[00:08:42] with breaking down the walls between sales and marketing and supply chain and R&D and having retailers, brands, technology and partners come together to be able to solve that problem where before they didn't have to and now we all need each other.
[00:08:59] Yeah and sort of I would imagine like they need to understand that whole path to purchase I would think that the multi-touch attribution is so important to be able to design creative that shows up wherever it's happening. Was that part of the conversation?
[00:09:25] Yes, very much so and making sure that that creative is also authentic and personalized to the consumer and to the channel that you're on. So there was a lot of conversation around
[00:09:38] social and we'll talk about that a bit and like the creator economy but there was also a lot of conversations around how am I making sure that my content is effective on all of my different
[00:09:50] channels and personalized in a way that the consumer is getting additional value. So one brand shared this example and it was one of my favorites they sell pasta sauce and they usually are selling pasta sauce in that category online and in their end caps in
[00:10:07] store and they worked with under the retailer partners and by looking at the data they realized that when their consumers bought pasta sauce they also bought generic brand ground beef because they were probably making lasagna. So they started targeting their ads in the category of ground beef
[00:10:24] when people were buying that and then they would also send them content on recipes to make lasagna. So I just I loved that example because I thought about the fact that it's relevant, it's personalized to the consumer because they're using the data from the retailer,
[00:10:41] they're using the insights they have as the brand, they're bringing that together and then they're creating a better experience for the consumer in an authentic way. And did you get at the conference the, we've talked a bit about it on the podcast and
[00:10:58] certainly at the summit about sort of the future of personalization and that we're on the threshold of a great unlock particularly as more of these interactions happen with on retailer properties where they have a lot of data about the consumer.
[00:11:20] So there's sort of that first party data but also the potential of AI to sort of unlock being able to do it at scale like was personalization and sort of did you sense some
[00:11:31] excitement about that happening or do oh yes 100% and the two things that were talked about with personalization were data and AI you hit the nail on the head there. I mean Microsoft's entire
[00:11:41] theme was that it was AI is not creative you are and they were talking about how AI will power personalization and then you need the data to be able to back that up and a lot of conversations
[00:11:55] were about first party data the death of the cookie how to think about using your first party data to better understand your consumer create the right creative on the right channel and then who in
[00:12:08] your organization needs to receive that information where does it live like it went down the whole gamut of how you think about personalization. I think the excitement was around bringing retailers brands and agencies together to pool all of your data and resources and tell a better
[00:12:27] story. A lot of panels had someone representative from a retailer brand and an agency and they were talking about examples of how they work together. I sat in on a panel around Disney
[00:12:40] and Walt Disney is obviously they have Disney plus so they were talking about like some of their offerings on TV and how they're targeting specific ads based on the household based on this
[00:12:51] age of the child in that household so they're using data that they already have about their consumer to better personalize the experience and that goes across social media, tv, commerce, even in-store which was really exciting to see. There was another story that I really loved where a brand
[00:13:11] was talking about they had this really exciting end cap in a grocery store for one of their products. It was I believe it was toothpaste and they were super excited about it they got this place but
[00:13:22] they never were able to get it before and people were going to the store but they didn't want to buy it in store they wanted to buy it online and people were going to the Amazon PDP and it was
[00:13:32] out of stock and so it was just it was a perfect example of if you don't have all of your functions working together and you're working in a silo you're wasting dollars. You just wasted your
[00:13:45] money. And cats are not cheap. So frustrating, no. Neither are ads. Fascinating. You talked sort of at the beginning of this little segment about everything and nothing has changed in marketing and you know often creative stems from the creative brief process. I'm guessing that
[00:14:05] hasn't changed but did you sort of hear that talk to like is that evolving in this new world or is that still the core of things? And I was super excited about this just coming from my brand
[00:14:16] side because I remember the briefing process can be really challenging when you're briefing about writing creative or starting a new campaign and I actually heard several different brands talk about how the briefing process needs to be more flexible in order to create the right content
[00:14:34] because right now it's very okay. Here's the standard. Here's the questions we ask. This has to happen first, then it needs to go to the agency, then it needs to go to approval and it doesn't
[00:14:45] have areas in the brief that talk about maybe it's only e-commerce specific or maybe it's an in-store in an e-commerce campaign so we need to think about it differently. And so a lot of the conversations were around how can you evolve the briefing process to apply more specifically
[00:15:03] to the channel that you are selling on or to the consumer so that you can incorporate more channels rather than just maybe in-store or social or just thinking about the asset itself. And one of the
[00:15:16] brands that spoke they were saying that they actually brought their agency into the process earlier and had more of like a roundtable discussion with all of the functions that needed to be involved in the campaign while they were writing the brief because sometimes it can be
[00:15:34] a bit of a top-down where the brand marketer fills out the brief and then hands it to someone and then nobody talks about it. So they're starting much earlier to consider commerce in the briefing
[00:15:44] process so it doesn't get to the end and then you realize I don't know I'm making this up. This is not actually gonna work. Yeah or the product is not e-commerce ready or the packaging
[00:15:53] is wrong or anything like that. So what was really unique I think about a lot of these conversations was they brought the operational side of marketing into the discussion and I heard someone say that
[00:16:07] that was the unlock for them. And what I really kind of observed is that there's no lack in creativity. Everybody has creativity. They have great content, great agencies but they are not being brilliant at the basics around operations and around actually executing it
[00:16:25] and a lot of brands are revisiting that to make sure that they can do that at scale quickly to be able to deploy their creative. And I would imagine making sure that they are working with agencies who get that like I would imagine again not having been invited.
[00:16:40] Next year Peter, next year. Oh my gosh. I have to get your outfits ready. It was definitely intense. Yeah no no I'll be one of the tech bros that just wears a black t-shirt and there were people like that so I'm sure there was. So
[00:17:03] I have to get back on track. What was I talking about? I don't know what you were going to talk about. We're talking about the briefing process and
[00:17:13] Oh I know that this must be a time you have to keep all that in. That there must be a time for agencies to really restructure and bring in a wider swath of expertise
[00:17:31] to be able to be the partner that their brands need to make all this happen. I'm sure that was Yes. That was another thing that was a big topic of conversation and a lot of brands presented
[00:17:46] with their agencies but then a lot of brands presented without agencies and they actually were asking the agencies for more help and saying this is what we need from our partners. This is how we should be operating. This is what we need to accelerate. And so
[00:17:59] it was almost like a cry for like let's do this differently. Let's work together in a very very collaborative way. Yeah but I also heard the the retailers and the brands talk about how they need
[00:18:11] to change the agency structure to better meet the needs of the brands and retailers and how that is is shifting because their structures are shifting so everybody needs to be very very
[00:18:23] clear around who owns what at the brand at the retailer and at the agency and make sure that those are the right people in the conversation because that has drastically shifted and I think
[00:18:34] there's just a bit of confusion and everyone just needs to kind of sort that out. And you know you can talk about those things at a shop talk or a digital shelf summit or something but when
[00:18:44] you're talking about it where all of the major principles of each one of those are sitting in the room that makes a difference. It really does. That's why it was just such a unique
[00:18:55] experience and there were so many people there from the commerce world and I really see it growing year over year because of that. And so you know I'm sure there were a number of themes that stood
[00:19:06] out to you but I don't know pick another one. What's what's the one that seemed like the next biggest thing? The creator economy. There was a lot of talk about user generated content, influencer, social commerce and I loved what someone who spoke on a panel said this they
[00:19:25] were like listen we're not at scale yet. We are not social commerce is not like a main revenue driver for brands but you need to be able to build the muscle now for when it is because
[00:19:39] user generated content is now consumed more than agency created content and extend your song at the conference was talking about Gen Alpha which is the generation after Gen Z and they are going to spend more time doing discovery they're going to spend 126 hours doing discovery
[00:19:58] on social versus in store and so this is going to continue to be important and there was a lot of conversation around how are we creating user generated content? How are we working with influencers? How internally in our organization will be will we be able to support that?
[00:20:17] And I thought it was really it was great to hear that the brand said they need some more trust with their influencers and the people that are creating user generated content because brands
[00:20:28] want to control it. They want to control the narrative they want to control the story that that influencer or the user generated content tells about the product but you can't and it actually then becomes unauthentic which is not what the consumer wants so I loved the conversations
[00:20:47] around that and they had some influencers there with their brands and it was really just funny to watch and have them say like listen we got it we understand what you want like let us use our
[00:20:57] brand to tell that story and we can have a conversation but please don't say you need to say these words or you need to do this because that takes away from the authenticity of the influencer and their story and talking about their product. So overall the creator economy
[00:21:14] and the use of user generated content was a hot topic across many many panels that I sat on because it is the future for it is the current situation for Gen Z it's the future for Gen Alpha
[00:21:27] and I think with AI people are more concerned around content and reviews but if there's videos or user generated content or influencers that they trust they're going to get their information from them so how can brands use them to tell their story? That's fascinating and you know
[00:21:51] for a while creator economy meant celebrities and then there was like the next layer of creators which were had large enough audiences they aren't celebrities but within their niche now it seems like there's a universe of them that gets you know increasingly sort of
[00:22:11] micro micro micro but still super valuable if you can collaborate with them at scale was that sort of conversation on is that part of this sort of next generation of creators that they're
[00:22:25] going to tap into? Yes actually the the panel that I sat in on it they were considered a micro influencer because they don't have like millions of followers but they drove such value for the
[00:22:36] brand because it was their niche audience so it's less about like having the celebrities and there were a lot of celebrities there I accidentally bumped into Sean White the
[00:22:45] snowboarder so that was fun I didn't know it was him until after I walked past him. Did you knock him off his snowboard? I did not he was checking into his hotel and I like kind of bumped into him I was
[00:22:55] like oh hi and he said hi and I walked past and I was like that was Sean White but anyway uh so it's no longer about like the big celebrities it's about finding your niche market and
[00:23:07] having an influencer who has really great uh credibility in that space. So when you talk about niche that just brings to mind when I think about where the growth's coming from over this next
[00:23:20] decade of the digital shell it's going to be you know there'll still always be the huge campaigns that drive you know billions of dollars or whatever but I think a lot of the the growth is going
[00:23:32] to be is going to come from getting better everywhere. You know showing up everywhere, optimizing everywhere, getting down to you know this whole personalization niche like I want marketing for me kind of stuff. I think that's where that's where the growth's going
[00:23:57] to come from for a lot of people do you agree with that and does it seem like that's where a lot of this conversation was going? Yes 100 percent a lot of the conversations were around how can
[00:24:07] we keep the customers that we have and how can we make sure that we're providing value to them and if we are going to go out and find new customers they need to be really authentic to
[00:24:17] to our brand and it was less about let's try to use all of this data that we have to go and create these massive campaigns and more about let's take our first party data
[00:24:30] let's take the data from the retailers let's create a story of what that looks like and then get really really laser focused on what our brand story is how we're telling it and where we're going to tell it and let's make sure that internally we're operating efficiently
[00:24:46] to be able to do that and from our leadership level all the way to the people actually doing the work they're in support of that and they're kind of working cohesively in order to do that
[00:24:56] and I thought that was interesting hearing from a lot of the C-suite how they talked about their teams working together they were very very focused on okay we need to make sure everybody's
[00:25:06] aligned on the ultimate goal we have to have the right technology in place we need to make sure that we're a lot of people use brilliant at the basics or operational execution make sure that's
[00:25:17] super clear and then make sure that our brand voice and our brand story is clear as well and I think that was important to come from the top down because if they understand that then
[00:25:28] it'll really kind of move throughout the entire organization wow well uh I'm delighted you went thank you that is that's a way bigger feeling than my resentment at not being there and
[00:25:43] you know you had so many valuable conversations there I know one of them you recorded so I want to make sure folks are listening to this podcast that they go back to last weeks because you
[00:25:53] had a chance to talk with Jeff Cohen who's the principal evangelist at amazon ads for a really terrific episode yeah definitely yet thank you yeah Jeff is awesome definitely listen to that
[00:26:07] he gave a lot of insight around the amazon canvas which is how they're talking about their suite of offerings uh so they talk we talked about amc some of the underutilized elements of amc
[00:26:19] how to think about data we talked about the canva integration so definitely go and check that out for from the amazon side of things if you work on that it's a it's a great listen and also if folks want to know some more of the themes that you
[00:26:33] uncovered while you were there of course they can go to your blog on linkedin lauren levac gilbert uh i'm sure everyone who listens to this is already connected with you but by all means do and lauren thank you for letting me pepper you with questions
[00:26:47] this was delightful thanks peter this was great and next year you will be at can i believe it i'm gonna wish it into existence oh well we'll see about that actually for an introvert
[00:26:58] it sounds i'm not gonna lie it is a lot and also i walked 22 000 steps every day because holy from one end of the beach to the other it's over a mile so it is a lot of walking
[00:27:11] it's a lot of connecting so if that is your cup of tea definitely go uh if not yeah i'll have to store up my batteries for for that adventure yes but uh so thank you so much for joining us lauren
[00:27:24] thanks peter thanks to lauren for making the huge sacrifice of going to the beaches at can all i can offer you is free membership in the dsi at digitalshelfinstitute.org that's about the same right thanks for being part of our community