But this year’s offering will be much more robust, explains Philip Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions and head of the events business at Ascential.

The biggest change is that the Lions, the awards themselves, will be back after a two year hiatus.

This year’s digital offering will include the awards along with its judges and winners, a deep dive into the creative “work.”  It’s all part of a yearlong digital pass for the Festival and other content for a $250 subscription.  Thomas says the deep content offering makes the essence of the Festival much more widely accessible.

Of course, the networking at events can’t be fully replicated on line, but Thomas hopes some of the networking and casual meetings will take place in a virtual world enabled by software from Spatial Web.   The plan allows all registered guests to assume an identity or avatar.

The Spatial Web software was used for a virtual party for 700 at  CES ’21 hosted by MediaLink, a division of Ascential.

Speaking of MediaLink, Thomas said that it is working on a plan to mark the festival in New York during the week of June 21, but noted that plans have not been finalized.

Thomas also spoke about the company’s investment in Hudson MX, an enterprise solution for advertising agencies and others to manage inventory and operations.   Ascential is the largest shareholder of Hudson MX.

Although Cannes Lions started in 1954, it wasn’t until the last decade or so that brand marketers began to attend, represented by the likes of Procter & Gamble. “They’re coming in a slightly different way,” Thomas notes in this interview with Beet.TV. “I think historically they were brought by their agencies but now they’re kind of coming on their own volition.”

Last year’s event saw the launch of the CMO Growth Council, a partnership with the CMO Masters Circle of the Association of National Advertisers featuring 25 CMO’s from some of the world’s biggest global brands. “Cannes Lions really is about how creativity will drive your business and that means growth. One place they believe they can unlock growth is through the use of creativity,” says Thomas.

The CMO Growth Council has since met in such locales as Dubai, Los Angeles, New York and London. “They’re coming together again at Cannes this year to continue to develop the conversations, publish white papers talk about the specific issues that marketers have.”

In adding two awards this year—the Entertainment Lions for Sport and the Creative Strategy Lions—the folks at Cannes had some doubts about the latter. “We didn’t know how the industry was going to respond,” Thomas says. Given initial estimate of perhaps 250 entries, “at the last count we’ve more than three times that many.”

CLX is designed around immersive and interactive experiences with some of the world’s best-known media and entertainment creators, including Activision Blizzard, Adobe, NBCUniversal and Tik Tok from China. “I think if we look across the festival over the last few years, that’s the most interesting thing is the number of different organizations that want to get engaged, who think they can provide solutions for clients and brands.

“It used to just be an advertising festival and it’s just not that anymore,” Thomas adds.

He mentions in passing last year’s Cannes Lions and the absence of Publicis Groupe, plus some shrinkage in the adtech space over the last few years. But events continue to be in demand because of a “human need, which is to be face-to-face and to be with other people,” Thomas says.

This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.” The series is sponsored by 4INFO. Please visit this page for additional segments.

Amid changing times and budgets for mainstay agency attendees and the arrival of a new kind of delegate, the festival is changing its own shape.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, festival chairman Philip Thomas highlights how Cannes Lions is getting both smaller and bigger at the same time.

Shorter festival

“Going from eight days to five days, we did that to try to make it more concentrated, so that people didn’t have to be away for so long. More or less, we managed that.”

Fewer Lions

“We’ve got rid of a lot of lions, rid of a lot of sub-categories, and that has meant that our entry numbers have gone down a lot, which is what the industry was asking us to do.”

Consultancies pitch up

“It’s a little bit of a misnomer to say that the consultancies are taken over. They’re taking over some very visible physical spaces, and that’s obviously their strategy. But, what I think is more interesting this year is the slightly changing mix of entrance into the Lions.”

Entries are up

“We’ve got entrants from clients increasing by 84%, that was on a 65% increase last year, we’ve got entries from consultancies up 30%, entries from media owners up 56%, and these are from low bases. The agencies still absolutely dominate the entries, but it’s just a subtle shift that we might see accelerate in the future.”

This video is part of The Road to Cannes, a preview of topics to be addressed at Cannes Lions. The series is presented by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. FreeWheel is a Comcast company.

The Lions’ 15,000 attendance swells the Cote D’Azur town’s 73,600 population every year, and is only getting larger, as the festival draws in professionals from segments outside its traditional creative agency delegate profile.

“Every year, there’s a huge amount of rumor,” Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas revealed to Beet.TV in this video interview. “It starts with the taxi drivers in Cannes saying, ‘You’re going to leave, aren’t you, to go to Barcelona or whatever?’

“But a few days ago I actually signed a deal with the mayor of Cannes to agree to stay for another 10 years.”

A rumored move to Barcelona would have seen Cannes Lions follow GSM World Congress, the original mobile industry conference, which spent several years in Cannes before reconstituting in Barcelona as Mobile World Congress, as the mobile industry took off.

But Lions isn’t there yet, Thomas said: “Although people say, ‘Aren’t you getting too big for Cannes?’, the fact is the film festival has more than twice as many people as we have. The region can actually deal with a lot of people. There are bigger shows than Cannes Lions.”

This year, advertising technology is set to play a bigger part than ever in Cannes Lions. But Thomas says “inspiration” is the watchword for an event he wants to remain about creativity.

About submissions have blossomed in entertainment, health, outdoor and product design categories, he said.

We spoke with him about the broad international scope of the Festival which will break attendance records.

Ahead of the iconic festival starting June 21, a record total 40,133 award entries have been submitted. Lions Innovation, which will see data, technology and creativity intersect, has received 226 entries into the Innovation category and 619 entries into Creative Data.

Ad tech companies are shaking up the media sector by promising advertisers more precise control over consumer targeting and trading.

Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas, the UK magazine publishing veteran who took the helm at the awards in 2006, tells Beet.TV in this video interview the festival is adapting to reflect changes: “It’s a mirror of the industry. All of the ecosystem is now attending.

“Our festival is just about creativity, so finding a place for ad-tech has been a challenge. But this year we’ve launched our Innovation Festival, which will give them a part to show what they can do. Unilever are bringing 50 startups to a startup academy we’ve got.”

We interviewed Thomas as part of the series The Road to Cannes, our lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival presented by Coull.  Please visit this page for additional segments.  This interview took place in the London office of SMG.