10 Things We Learned At Cannes Lions 2024

Phew. 

So here we are, another Cannes down. The biggest one yet? Perhaps not, but for Spin, no doubt. 

We were fortunate enough to take down a big team to get stuck in and see what it’s all about. It was 5 days of an exhausting schedule, digging deep and fully immersing ourselves into everything Cannes has to offer. 

✅ All the clichés are truth. 

✅ Everyone wears linen. 

✅ There are a lot of events on yachts. 

✅ Rosé starts early (for a work event). 

✅ The activations are next level. Shout out Stagwell, Meta, Pinterest this year. 

✅ Getting into Spotify is harder than breaking into Fort Knox.

✅ Celebrities are around every corner and some very big ones. 

✅ At 4AM, it’s surprisingly busy out. 

But here are a couple of observations and new things we learned this year:

1️. Our industry is in a very good place. It is a hive of activity, so much is changing, but under all of it - there is an industry that is thriving with opportunities everywhere. 

2️. You can’t just look at ‘Trends’. You have to recognise the difference between Fast Trends, Short-Term Trends & Long-Term trends. 

3️. You need a combination of Best Practice, Experimentation & Creativity to succeed. As TikTok said, “Use best practice to raise the floor, use test & learn to find your ceiling”. 

4️. Things we’ve known and seen for years and now being discussed at the mainstream level, namely, how the shift to creator-led content leads to greater authenticity BUT it has to perform well. 

5️. We should all be asking ourselves, “how can I be creative, in a data-driven way”. 

6️. According to Meta, 50% of time on Instagram is now spent on Reels and 75% of those reels are with sound-on. 

7️. Some KPIs you may not be tracking that you should - Share-To-View Ratio, Saves, View-Through 30 Seconds. 

8️. As Toto Wolff said, “You don’t want to go from Great to Good. You have to be constantly asking yourself and your team, ‘Are you still the best you can be’”?

9️. As Gary Vee says, modern marketing is all about finding under-valued attention and then exploding it - a lot of that under-valued attention right now is in women’s sports. 

10. We should all be looking towards micro-communities within social to find insights that drive creative ideas. 

That’s a wrap for 2024. 

🇫🇷 Cannes, Merci. 

👫 Spin team, it was a pleasure. 

🫂 To new friends, see you soon. 

Au revoir.