Events: Bias and Inclusion in Advertising, and all the surprises at LIONS LIVE Day four from Cannes Lions

GLOBAL – The LIONS Live June 25 stage, Cannes Lions and The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, released the findings of their new study “Bias and Inclusion in Advertising.”

Here are some highlights from Day Four:

The LIONS Live Debate brought together Lorraine Twohill, Steve Stoute, David Droga, Mark Read and Jean Lin to look at how the current crises will affect our industry. Jean Lin said that during a crisis like COVID-19, “You need an outpouring of creativity at pace.” They discussed how the new reality had been good for collaboration, with hierarchies diminished and a more motivated workforce but David Droga raised concerns that the change from office based working meant that you lost that “environment and alchemy that comes from people coexisting and creating around each other.”

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On the subject of race, Steve Stoute said he was upset by companies who act surprised about what they’re seeing right now around the topic of race, he believes every brand and agency needs an african american policy – and it has to be measurable and published. Continuing on the topic Mark Read said that WPP would release their data soon but what it’s showing is, “It’s not just that it’s not good enough, we haven’t moved the needle over the last five years and that’s the thing I find most frustrating.”

Professor Scott Galloway looked at the effects of coronavirus on society, the markets, and business. He said that for Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google, recession actually means acceleration – they do better coming out of a recession because they consolidate the market. Asked how long the recession would last, Galloway replied that there would be “5-10 years of low growth and possibly even a depression. If you look at income and equality, typically throughout economic history when it gets to these levels of inequality the good news is it self corrects – the bad news is the mechanisms for self correction are war famine and revolution.”

Dazed Media presented insights from The Era of Monomass, their new global report which asks what’s next in a fluctuating landscape for brands and media. It found that the next generation are adopting fluid identities and defining themselves by their interests over anything else, and so to connect with this new kind of audience, brands need to adopt a collective persona and find the cultural crossover points. The findings confirm that brands need to analyse, act and advocate, and that the era of influencers as we know it is over because we need icons who put social and common good first.

This day’s set of Creativity Report of the Decade winners are as follows:

Independent Agency of the Decade