Host Tina Daheley interviewing Cannes Lions MD Simon Cook

At the start of the year, Cannes Lions was going ahead until the global pandemic hit. It was then postponed, cancelled and now this free digital experience is happening in its place. “We made the decision to postpone when the global pandemic hit of course and then, ultimately, the decision to cancel, and that was very hard, a very tough decision, very emotional for the team involved especially.

He said they came to this decision after having many, deep conversations with their customers around the world. “It became very obvious very quickly that they were going through a degree of pain in the industry, like many businesses out there at the moment, so we wanted to remove any kind of distraction or ambiguity about our own position and decided to cancel.”

In its place, they created Lions Live because although their customers were telling them that they made the right decision to cancel this year’s Festival, they were going to miss that “shot in the arm of creativity”, that “creative reboot” that they get from the Festival every year. “So, we’re doing this in its place, for free, for everyone, and we’re excited about the coming five days!”

Cannes launches Lions Live

17 Jun 2020

In terms of what to expect, if you haven’t tuned in already, there’s a lot of great content being live-streamed and uploaded to the page. “This initiative is very much by the industry for the industry,” said Cook. “We’re very fortunate in that our customers are some of the best content creators in the world, so they’ve really rallied behind this and created in some cases one-off, bespoke films, which are very much a love letter to creativity.”

He took the opportunity to thank everyone involved, saying that this is a real testament to their dedication to the community but also to creativity as well.

Cannes Lions MD Simon Cook

Then, he introduced the presidents’ briefings, a special feature of Lions Live, never before having been open to the public. “The president briefing is an interesting one because it’s very familiar to us, the organisers and the juries, of course, that take part, but it’s never really been seen before by anyone else. It sits behind the curtain. It’s very opaque. So, for the first time ever, we’ll be talking to the jury presidents about the briefing that they would have given this year if they were able to come together at Cannes to judge the work, but also how it’s going to have to evolve because we’re not actually going to be able to meet until a year’s time now to put together that body of work, which will set the direction for the future.”

First up, Cooked interviewed the inaugural president of the new creative business transformation lion, Isobar global chief creative officer Ronald Ng on his presidential briefing for 2021. Look out for the interview on Bizcommunity, coming soon.

Be sure to register and watch live or on demand at LionsLive.CannesLions.com.