When Wenda Harris Millard discusses the evolution of the Cannes Lions festival she does so with many years of perspective. What she sees now is an efficient venue where people gather to engage with others \u201cwho have real implications for the future of their business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Millard is Vice Chairman of MediaLink, the strategic advisory and business development firm that has long been an integral part of Cannes. That relationship was a walkup to the 2016 acquisition of MediaLink by Cannes owner Ascential plc and Millard\u2019s assignment to run MediaLink\u2019s<\/a> first office outside of the United States, in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that people are really looking for efficiency in many ways,\u201d Millard says in this interview with Beet.TV. \u201cThey want to meet as many people as they can and Cannes is absolutely the place to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than 10 years ago, Cannes<\/a> was predominantly a conference about creativity in advertising. Over the years, ad-tech providers began to make their presence known along with brand marketers, media companies and celebrities \u201cNow we have the big broadcasters last year, every single one of them,\u201d Millard says.<\/p>\n

What hasn\u2019t changed is the fundamental role of advertising, which she describes as \u201ccreating desire.\u201d In order to do so, it\u2019s better to have \u201cmore information versus less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data derived from technology affords the opportunity of being smarter about consumers\u2019 desires and needs. \u201cIt also can help measure the impact in a way that we\u2019ve never had before,\u201d Millard adds.<\/p>\n

What has changed is that marketers are no longer the stewards of their brands. Consumers have taken on that role.<\/p>\n

Millard knows from her work at MediaLink that among companies\u2019 top priorities are finding good talent and making sure their organizations are structured in away to be \u201cable to take advantage of all things digital.\u201d What really matters now is speed \u201cand it kills you if you don\u2019t have it in this environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this end, Cannes is “one of the most important gatherings of the year by far,” says Millard. “The conversations and people at Cannes are designed to help give people some direction.”<\/p>\n

This segment is part of the Beet.TV lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. 2017. \u00a0The series is presented by Storyful<\/a>. \u00a0 For more from the series, please visit this page<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Wenda Harris Millard discusses the evolution of the Cannes Lions festival she does so with many years of perspective. What she sees now is an efficient venue where people gather to engage with others \u201cwho have real implications for the future of their business.\u201d Millard is Vice Chairman of MediaLink, the strategic advisory and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[6566],"tags":[4459,6345,6561,6562],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}