SOUTH AFRICA AT CANNES: Day 1 by Mike Abel

By Mike Abel | Day 1 at Cannes Lions 2025

The first day of Cannes always begins the same way, with the slight throb of regret pulsing behind my sunglasses, courtesy of one too many glasses of red from our traditional night-before dinner in the cobbled and enchanting, close-by 14th-century village of St Paul de Vence. Before heading to the Palais for registration and collecting the entry lanyard we’ll wear all week, I make a mandatory pilgrimage with my partners to Copenhagen Coffee Lab for two life-saving flat whites. Non-negotiable. And then, the learning begins. Or perhaps more accurately for today, the affirming reminders – given AI is going to dominate the conversations over the next five days.

If there’s one thing that emerged most clearly from the sessions today, it’s that in a world equally seduced and terrified by AI, data, and short-term metrics, it’s still the human pulse that drives great work. Not algorithms. Not dashboards. But emotion, culture, and intuition. More heart than head.

What stood out across everything I heard was this: creativity is not something you can ever extract from a spreadsheet. It’s always something you feel. The best work moves people.

Given the obviously tech-dominated backdrop for 2025, Tor Myhren of Apple kicked off the day “making a case for human creativity.” He shared: “The good news: AI won’t kill advertising. The bad news: AI won’t save advertising.” Right now, many are intoxicated by technologies that promise precision, while potentially sacrificing meaning. You need both. Resonance should never be the casualty. Today reinforced that we don’t need to reinvent everything – we need to remember what made us great in the first place.

Ad legend Sir John Hegarty reminded us that too often, brand philosophies die with their founders. It’s our responsibility to ensure that brands retain their magical DNA and rediscover their original values – the soul of a business. For him, “AI has democratised opportunity and thus, creativity is the only thing left to compete on.” Clear in his message was this: culture is what sustains, not scale. And while being the biggest agency or group remains many people’s goal, there’s a growing recognition that being the boldest is what truly matters.

Bravery in creativity is a multiplier. When you get it right, it echoes across both brand and business performance. Throughout the day, I was also struck by the increasingly futile divide between brand and performance. Self-imposed structural silos don’t serve anyone. Not the marketer. Not the CEO. And certainly not the consumer. The best ideas are platform-agnostic. They don’t wear different hats for short-term and long-term. They simply work. Rooted in truth, relevant by necessity, and executed with flair.

Much discussion centred around balancing short-term needs with longer-term thinking. But what’s clear is this: difficult economic times are, paradoxically, fertile ground for long-term brand investment, precisely because everyone else is focused only on the now. Sadly, it’s only the bigger and more established brands that can afford to do both. To this point, we too often treat brand as an indulgence rather than as an engine for growth. But if people don’t know you, and like you, they won’t choose you. Familiarity and fame remain powerful, durable tools, especially in a market of infinite choice and a modern world of shrinking attention spans.

And attention, I was reminded, is not a given. Dr Karen Nelson-Field shared fascinating insights that suggest most media today is bought in a way that prioritises reach over resonance. “Served versus seen” as she put it. The real problem, she argued, isn’t bad creative, it’s often good creative placed in invisible spaces. “If it’s not seen, it can’t work.” She revealed that 75% of ad space bought, even on standards we trust, isn’t actually seen. What I found most sobering in her presentation was this: we’re not just paying for impressions. We’re paying a kind of tax to exist in “dull media” environments – scroll-heavy, context-light, emotion-free zones that bleed value while pretending to deliver efficiency.

So what do we do? We get bold. We integrate. We make fewer things but far better. And we fight for the kind of creativity that earns attention, rather than just tries to buy it.

It was a day of reminders more than revelations. A reawakening of principles I’ve always believed: that culture drives consistency, bravery drives impact, and creativity, when seen, when felt, is still the sharpest tool we’ve got.

Then to the metal: a big shout-out to our friends at Joe Public for bringing home a Bronze Lion, and huge congratulations to Ogilvy JHB, who shared a Cannes Grand Prix with their London and Singapore offices. Outstanding.

As I head to bed, I’m thinking, if Day 1 was about complete affirmation in the power of rich, resonant, and original ideas over “tech,” and extra emphasis on placing those ideas in the right spaces, I’m deeply curious what Day 2 will reveal.

What a week lies ahead.

Here’s what you need to know about our Cannes Lions 2025 Partners LITTLEBIG:

LITTLEBIG is a team-focused, quality-obsessed production company that backs South African creativity where it counts: behind the scenes, on set, and on the world stage. They’ve been with us every step of the way to Cannes and we couldn’t be prouder to partner with them.
Read more about LITTLEBIG partnering with IDIDTHAT to bring you all the South Africans in Cannes news 2025

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