Tuesday, the second day of the Cannes Lions festival 2025, was full of great speakers and wonderful insights. I am watching this year’s Cannes sessions digitally from my home in Bengaluru, so my daughter keeps wishing me happy travels to France and back each day. What can I say to that?

A session I was looking forward to was the conversation with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and Co-founder of DeepMind. His dialogue with Colleen DeCourcy, the former Chief Creative Officer of Snap Inc., was both insightful and delightful.

Mustafa spoke about how powerful but easy-to-use AI tools and capabilities will radically empower millions of people, including tens of thousands of marketers. As a result, the quality of output is likely to go through the roof. However, the good news is that even non-technological people, including marketers and advertising folk, can use these tools very easily. He urged marketers to drive these AI tools and shape them to their own requirements, to become ever more creative. One of his sentences echoed in my mind – “There is no excuse for not using AI in whatever work you do.”

Build slowness in AI

A very interesting aspect of this discussion was about how friction and slowness is inherent in how human beings develop creative ideas. For instance, we like to sleep over our initial ideas or think for a while before we finalise them. Mustafa talked about how it would be important to build such friction and slowness into AI models as well, to ensure that the best ideas emerge, after several iterations if need be.

A sharp counterpoint to Mustafa’s conversation was another powerful session on the art of building timeless brands, delivered by Marc Pritchard, the Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble. Marc began his session by pointing out that his company does not believe in brand lifecycles, they simply focus on building brands that last and last. He pointed out that technology, including AI, is a powerful enabler of brands, but at the heart of building great brands lies humanity and not technology.

Marc went deep into decades of his experience to put forward five lovely lessons for building timeless brands. I will focus on just one of these lessons here – that marketers need to fall and stay in love with the craft of advertising. Using creativity to propel people to turn towards our brand is the key, he said. This requires art, science and craft. His message to the audience was to focus on this craft, rather than getting lured into the hamster wheel of constant content. “I am not a fan of content”, Marc declared, even as he highlighted how P&G brands had delivered hard working yet memorable brand campaigns over the years.

Indian agencies made a good start this year to winning Cannes Lions, which are regarded as the Oscars of advertising. On the very first day, our agencies won eight lions, including one gold, four silvers and three bronze lions. Here’s wishing them all the best for a rich haul in the days ahead !

Harish Bhat is an avid marketer and bestselling author. He was previously the Brand Custodian at Tata Sons.

Published on June 17, 2025