Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook Breaks Down The Festival’s Inaugural Global CEO Forum

Key Concepts

• Creativity as a strategic business imperative: Creativity viewed not just as a marketing function, but as a driver of growth and value creation across the entire organization.
• Traditional levers of growth: Transformation, M&A, scale, efficiency.
• Creativity as infrastructure: Embedding creativity and innovation across the entire organization, not siloing it within marketing.
• Urgency: The cost of not prioritizing creativity now and the growth being left on the table.
• Cost of Dysfunction: The measurable negative commercial impact when creativity is siloed and not holistically applied.
• Creative Intelligence as Moat: The idea that a company's creative capabilities are becoming a key competitive advantage.

Inaugural Global CEO Forum Overview

The inaugural global CEO forum, held by Can Lions, brought together approximately 50 CEOs from diverse industries (airline, media, entertainment, technology, CPG, beauty, retail, fashion, QSR) to discuss creativity not merely as a marketing tool, but as a critical strategic business imperative. The forum, facilitated under the Chatham House Rule, aimed to explore how creativity can be leveraged as a lever of growth and value creation, addressing the often-overlooked and underutilized potential within organizations.

The Genesis of the Forum: Addressing CEO Needs

Simon Cook, CEO of Can Lions, explained the forum stemmed from a growing trend of CEOs attending the Can Lions festival. These CEOs expressed interest in understanding how to leverage creativity as a growth driver, leading to the decision to create a dedicated space for them to explore this topic in depth.

Reframing Creativity: Input vs. Output

A key discussion point centered around reframing creativity not as a mere output (e.g., campaigns, advertising) but as an input – a foundational element or "infrastructure" that should be embedded across the entire organization. This involves fostering a culture of innovation and ensuring that creativity is not confined to the marketing department or CMO.

The Branding Problem of "Creativity"

The forum addressed whether the term "creativity" itself has a branding problem. Some CEOs suggested that reframing it as "innovation" might resonate better, as innovation directly relates to organic growth, a language CEOs and shareholders understand. Other words like "disruption" and "imagination" were also suggested.

Apple's Approach to Creativity

Tour from Apple (Creative Marketer of the Year) shared insights into how Apple facilitates, protects, nurtures, and prioritizes creativity throughout the enterprise, from product development to marketing. A key takeaway was that creatives at Apple report only to other creatives, fostering a self-perpetuating culture of creativity shielded from undue influence. This ensures that creativity, which began with Steve Jobs, is protected and nurtured throughout the organization. Apple ensures its creative ecosystem is protected by having creatives only report to creatives.

The Cost of Inaction: "What Is the Cost of Not Now?"

A recurring theme was the urgency of addressing creativity as a business imperative. Participants were challenged to consider the "cost of not now" – the potential growth and value being left on the table by failing to prioritize creativity. It was argued that creativity is not just additive, but dilutive in its absence and potentially destructive to value creation.

World-Class Creative Marketing Outperforms the Stock Market

It was mentioned that companies with world-class creative marketing outperform the stock market by 8% annually. This data point was presented as "new ammunition" for CEOs to take action on creativity within their organizations.

Defining Creativity and Responsibility

CEOs were asked how they define creativity and who is responsible for it within their organizations. A surprising majority (around 90%) believed that creativity is the responsibility of the entire organization, not just marketing. However, some CEOs didn't realize they could play a role as "architects of commercial creativity," shaping organizational design and incentives to facilitate creativity.

The Role of Fear and Risk-Taking

The discussion touched on the role of fear as an inhibitor of creativity. One CEO stated: "You won't get fired for the risks you don't take, but you will for the mistakes you do make." This highlights the human tendency to avoid risk and maintain the status quo, which can stifle innovation.

Extrapolating Lessons Across Industries

Despite the diverse industries represented at the forum, it became clear that many of the challenges and solutions related to fostering creativity are transferable. Participants could see how case studies and experiences from different sectors could be applied to their own businesses.

The Widening Gap Between CMOs and CEOs

McKenzie presented data showing a widening gap between CMOs and CEOs in terms of metrics and understanding of marketing's role. In the last 12 months, there was a 20 percentage point decrease in the percentage of chief executives who said they were clear on the role that marketing plays in their company. Even more, according to a McKenzie report, only 15% of CMOs believe that they own the customer and take a customer centric view, which raises the question if the other 85% of CMOs should be fired. 80% of CEOs and CMOs believe that they should be investing more in marketing. According to McKenzie, when everyone is in charge of the customer growth and acquisition, no one owns the customer.

Middle Management: A Bottleneck for Creativity

One participant observed that "middle management is where ideas go to die," highlighting a potential bottleneck in the flow of innovation within organizations. This was attributed to a lack of accountability and the absence of the right direction, infrastructure, and tools for middle managers to effectively foster creativity. Instead, middle management should be a place where creativity lives rather than dies. Decentralization and pushing decisions down to those closest to the customer can improve success.

Speaking the Language of the CEO: The Business Case for Creativity

Speakers who framed creativity in terms of business outcomes and commercial returns resonated most strongly with the CEOs. Interbrand's analysis of the creative output of the world's largest companies and its impact on EBIT and market cap was cited as an example of a compelling business case.

Illustrative Examples of Creativity

Examples of creativity beyond marketing campaigns were shared, including:

• Solving regulatory issues in 50 countries with imagination.
• Creating a culture of creativity that improves staff satisfaction, recruitment and retention, customer relationships, and quality metrics.

Conclusion and Future Outlook

Despite the understanding of the importance of creativity as an imperative for companies, fewer are embracing it. The forum concluded with a call for CEOs to act as architects of commercial creativity, fostering a culture of innovation throughout their organizations. The success of the inaugural event suggests there will be a year two, continuing to provide CEOs with the tools, data, and insights they need to leverage creativity for growth.

The key takeaways were encapsulated in the final challenge: "What is the cost of not now?" emphasizing the urgent need to prioritize creativity as a strategic business imperative.