As Tim Castree prepares for his role as Jury President of the Media Lions for the upcoming Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, he hopes to see entries that reflect how brands have effectively married creativity and context.<\/p>\n

His first-time judging gig comes after the Cannes Lions<\/a> reached a tipping point in 2017 as some agencies pushed back on the cost and scale of the venerable event. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a little bit more subdued this year,\u201d Castree, the Global CEO of GroupM\u2019s Wavemaker agency, says in this interview with Beet.TV.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, he\u2019s \u201cexcited to dig into the work.\u201d With pre-judging efforts already under way, \u201cI\u2019m up to my eyeballs in looking at work at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castree believes that there\u2019s a \u201csimple mission\u201d to Cannes: celebrating the context of creativity from both a macro\u2014the \u201czeitgeist\u201d of what\u2019s happening around the world\u2014and micro scale. About the former, he points to all the \u201cexcitement and change going on in the world,\u201d along with disruption and cause-related movements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of places and spaces for brands to get involved in the conversation in the larger context of all the excitement and change going on in the world,\u201d Castree says. \u201cGreat brands love to be part of bigger conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a judge<\/a> of award entries, he\u2019s interested in the contextual aspects of media and \u201chow brands take advantage of what is going on in our times and to be part of those conversations in ways that are interesting and engaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the micro side of things, Castree talks about addressability, data and targeting and \u201cthe context of one to one.\u201d Combining the macro with the micro provides \u201cgreat opportunities for brands to show how they marry creativity and context\u201d to drive business outcomes.<\/p>\n

He brings a particular view to his judging duties when it comes to entries that might stretch the strict definition of a Cannes media entry, noting that \u201cmedia entries come from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he will be on the lookout for entries that \u201cget stacked with a lot of things that aren\u2019t always about media. I\u2019ve seen a little bit of that already, to be honest. Ideas matter, but there\u2019s a lot of other places at Cannes for ideas to get recognized and rewarded.\u201d<\/p>\n

He feels that this year\u2019s event will be more subdued than last year because \u201cagencies have pulled back a little bit. Without Publicis there it\u2019s going to make a difference,\u201d he says in reference to the holding company\u2019s voluntary absence from Cannes 2018.<\/p>\n

In any case, he thinks it\u2019s \u201cappropriate to reset a little bit and refocus on the central themes of the power of creativity to move business and to move people.\u201d Distractions at previous Cannes festivals have included celebrities, luxury and scenery, \u201cwhich are fun and wonderful but that really can distract from the central focus and message of what Cannes is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Wavemaker, Cannes is about the \u201cdensity of intellect, the density of talent, the density of great thought leaders, thinkers. For us that\u2019s about media, content and technology and how the marriage of those three things are really creating the future of media.\u201d<\/p>\n

This video is part of The Road to Cannes, a preview series of topics to be addressed at Cannes Lions.\u00a0 \u00a0The series is presented by FreeWheel, a Comcast company.\u00a0 For more videos from the series, please visit this page.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Tim Castree prepares for his role as Jury President of the Media Lions for the upcoming Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, he hopes to see entries that reflect how brands have effectively married creativity and context. His first-time judging gig comes after the Cannes Lions reached a tipping point in 2017 as some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":52359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[7028,7262],"tags":[4865,6671,7259],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52357"}],"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=52357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}