At this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the buzz wasn’t just about AI. A more human-centric approach to marketing, driven by creators and influencers, also captured the spotlight.
Dubbed the “Festival of Creators” by Digiday, this year’s festival focused heavily on the creator economy and the growing, symbiotic relationship between brands and influencers. Major creators like Alix Earle, Jackie Aina, Tinx, Harry Jowsey, Jake Shane, and Tefi Pessoa were included in the lineup of panelists and attendees. This was also the first year Cannes introduced the Lions Creator track, a collaboration with Viral Nation specifically for creator programming and networking.
A major theme across the creator-led tracks was the importance of authenticity in forming a powerhouse creator-brand alliance, as was clearly articulated by TikTok star Alix Earle during the app’s “Now Trending: Authenticity” panel:
“If I love the product, that’s a huge thing for me. It’s always about being authentic, which I know is a big thing today and a big theme. I love just working with brands that I authentically already love, and if I don’t know the product or don’t know the brand, it’s something I’ll try out for a few months before working with them and sharing with my audience, because I feel like I have very good trust with my audience.”
Gone are the early days of influencer marketing when follower counts reigned supreme and over-filtered photos generated the most engagement. Today’s social media users are more savvy and skeptical of marketing collaborations than ever before, which means that creators must be extremely careful when choosing which brands to partner with, and brands must be more open to following the creative direction of their contracted influencers.
Q3 Predictions:
Prime Day is July 16 & 17, and we expect to see splashy collaborations between major Tiktok & Amazon creators and brands. Also keep an eye on retailers like Target and Walmart as they launch sales and coordinated creator campaigns to compete with Prime Day.
WNBA Draft Cements Women’s Basketball into Pop Culture
Following the astronomical success of the 2024 women’s NCAA tournament, the WNBA held a record-breaking Draft in April. The 2024 event drew nearly 2.5 million viewers, making it the most-viewed WNBA event on ESPN in history. For the first time since 2016, the league also offered spectator tickets to 1,000 lucky fans — they sold out in less than 15 minutes.
Compared to last year’s draft, the 2024 event generated 157% more unique news moments and 29% more unique articles, per Sightly’s internal news & culture data platform.
Caitlin Clark, the #1 rookie pick of the draft, deserves much of the credit for the WNBA’s recent surge in viewership. Her WNBA debut with the Indiana Fever drew 2.1 million viewers across all platforms, making it the most-watched Women’s game since 2001. Clark, the first D1 player ever to score over 3,000 points, shared the rookie spotlight with other big names from the NCAA circuit, including Cameron Brink, Kamilla Cardoso, and Angel Reese.
And Clark isn’t the only one drawing in the eyeballs. Together, the 2024 rookie class has catapulted the league to record-breaking heights. Games in May averaged 1.32 million viewers — a nearly 3x increase from last season’s average. In-person attendance for games during the opening month was the highest in 26 years, with arena capacity up 17% compared to last year.
Q3 Stories to Follow:
All eyes will be on Paris as the USA Women’s Basketball Team takes on the world at the 2024 Summer Olympics. While Team USA is favored to win gold, Clark was controversially left off of the Olympic roster. We expect international viewership of USA Women’s Basketball to shatter records and match (or exceed) that of the Men’s team.
Advertisers Get Real on Sustainability
Another major theme that emerged from Cannes was the growing call for the advertising industry to step-up its sustainability practices. The most important announcement came from GARM and Ad Net Zero, who together launched a new set of standards for measuring carbon emissions in media.
The Global Media Sustainability Framework is a “series of voluntary industry standards to improve consistent, comparable measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from digital, television, print, audio, outdoor, and cinema channels.”
With support and input from GroupM, Havas, Omnicom, Publicis, IPG, IAB, 4A’s, and a dozen other brand & agency representatives, GARM led the year-long initiative with Ad Net Zero to create the new industry-wide measurement framework. The initial iterations of the measurement formulae that have been released are for TV, digital and OOH, with additional formulae set to be released in the coming months.
Q3 Predictions:
We expect more sustainability-focused collaborations between brands, agencies and ad tech platforms to launch throughout the year. IPG recently announced their new Climate Action Marketplace in partnership with SeenThis and Pubmatic. Learn more about Sightly’s own partnership with Ad Net Zero here.
Brands Scale Back Pride Celebrations
Each June, we’re used to seeing brands go “all-in” on Pride marketing. Many will share Pride-friendly content on social media, update their logo with a rainbow, host community events, partner with LGBTQIA+ influencers, and even release Pride-themed products. This year however, marketing for Pride Month was notably muted, especially from big corporations.
Perhaps in response to public backlash against brands for “pride washing” or pandering to LGBTQIA+ audiences for financial gain, marketers chose to scale back their public-facing Pride initiatives in 2024. Brands have also faced growing criticism from across the ideological spectrum, including from conservatives who disapprove of what they consider to be “woke” corporate agendas.
Take Target and Bud Light, for example — both reported significant revenue loss after their trans-friendly Pride initiatives angered conservative consumers and spurred a national boycott of their products in 2023.
No matter which angle you take, the data is clear — unique news moments related to Pride Month significantly declined in June 2024 vs. June 2023.
This trend suggests that brands are increasingly cautious about their approach to Pride marketing, balancing support for the LGBTQIA+ community with the potential for backlash.
Q3 Predictions:
We anticipate this “toned-down” approach to marketing around DEI issues to continue, so long as brands struggle to navigate the cultural nuances of politically-charged trends. Brands who want to surround these topics authentically must codify their unique perspectives and identify relevant, real-time moments that align with their cultural mentality.