“We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.”
Marshall McLuhan
This one will be a little different. Cannes is normally a mirror to the industry. But this year it was a kaleidoscope. It showed us many possible futures. An endless array of possibilities that will forever change things. It was weird, you could see something and the exact opposite of it at the same time. And because there was so much of it, it felt close to madness with beautiful weather. It was feverish. It was the upside down. So, each day I wrote a paragraph. An impressionistic paragraph of what I heard and saw. And most importantly, the feeling Cannes gave me. These are those paragraphs
Monday. 2025 and the best advertising is still in the Palais and the worst advertising is just outside of it. It is bad but very honest. Flyers and handouts. Wristbands that get you into something very exclusive. You know, for you and 6000 other exclusive people. Inside, people nurse jet-lag while whispering and staring at endless boards. There are always groups of people on little tours. With them is an advertising tour guide who explains the work to the group. For some reason they always sound like they had a roll in Bridget Jones Diary to me. Spontaneous hugs and kisses happen throughout the day when former comrades bump into each other after years and thousands of miles apart. This is the only place in the world this happens. And from personal experience, it is one of the best things about Cannes. In the end, it is always the people right?
Outside, a million lanyards in the sun. You will perfect the lanyard glance over the week. This is where you pretend to remember someone’s name but have just glanced down at the lanyard. The way you win is to do it before they have had time to look at yours which makes things beautifully awkward. And then you walk around a corner and see a man smoking a cigarette like it’s their last idea. You see their assistant screaming into the phone. It has to be a table for fucking eight. It just has to be. Please God give me a table for eight.
Tuesday. Cannes has always been a paradox. A place where ideas are worshipped and ignored in equal measure. It is a temple to creativity, and yet creativity can become the sideshow because of how the industry is changing. I wonder how many people that go to Cannes actually go to the shows and look at the work? The best work reminds you of what it means to feel something real, and the worst forgets feeling altogether. You hear people on stage who keep saying A.I won’t take your job it will assist you in doing your job better. Meanwhile huge job cuts are happening globally in the advertising industry. Like I said, a paradox. Whatever you think, you will hear the opposite. So, in the end, your opinion is all you have. With all that extra information and knowledge, your opinion is still your only compass.
Wednesday. The Carlton terrace has a slow madness. Not the loud kind at first, but the kind that builds. It started with laughter, loud and sharp like the crack of a starter’s pistol. Then comes the conversation. The boasting. The energy. The pretending. And the believing.
Men in linen blazers with glazed eyes clutch glasses full of melting ice. Women vape with one hand and text with the other. Everyone is talking. Nobody is listening. I heard a man from London pitching an idea to a man from São Paulo who didn’t speak English but nodded anyway. And then they both laughed and agreed it was a great idea.
It seemed like every conversation was about A.I and what will happen to holding companies. Or that there will be thousands of Indies and the industry will rise again. Machines will advertise to machines. Or how in-house is definitely the way forward. Or there needs to be a new this or we definitely have to kill that. But the truth is nobody knows for sure. So we will do what we have always done. We will try some shit. And doing is always the answer for us. Later on, leathery men who are perpetually tanned speak like generals at war, like prophets with talking points. There’s confidence in the way they stir their drinks, but their eyes flicker when they think no one’s watching. Some say the industry’s dying. Some say it’s just being reborn. I think it’s doing both. I think it always is. The kaleidoscope of Cannes would seem to agree.
Thursday. What I do know is there is less space for hat salesmen on the Croisette. Every year I buy a hat from them. It’s a little tradition. The little guys with tables of straw fedoras and knock-off sunglasses, get pushed further back each year by pop-up brand temples and LED billboards selling crypto cologne and purpose water. The Croisette used to have cracks in it—room for the hustlers. Now it’s polished smooth, all sheen and certainty. But I miss the hat salesmen. Triumphantly, they had returned by Thursday. They had fought back. This made me smile. They didn’t pretend to change the world. They just tried to sell hats in the heat. There was honesty in that.
Friday. I have decided to follow the words of the famous screenwriter William Goldman. He said, Nobody knows anything…Not one person in the entire motion picture field (insert preferred industry) knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one. Nobody knows anything. They never have. But they talk like they do—loud, rehearsed, confident. Predictions wrapped in buzzwords—they’re just stories we tell to make the chaos feel planned. We really should give chaos a bit more love. It’s what built this great industry of ours. And for some reason, this gave me an enormous sense of wellbeing as I flew through a very unpredictable Middle-East to get home. With apologies to Blur.
The one thing I do know is the future won’t be like all the self-proclaimed experts say it will be. It never is. The future doesn’t take notes at a keynote. And when it comes, it won’t announce itself.
It never does.
Damon's Brain 