Around 2016, I started to notice how the Cannes Lions festival truly was making room for presenters who had important messages to share about feminism, inclusiveness and equality. I attended as many sessions as I could, and the content was top-notch.
The problem? I didn't see many other people there.
To their credit, recruiters turned out. Young women and POC too, though they admittedly make up a relatively small percentage of festival goers. But the convention halls were often far from capacity for such sessions—and notably lacking in the high-ranking executives who could actually act on these initiatives.
Cannes has continued to expand its programming on the equality front, and attendance has continued to be hit or miss, especially in comparison to sessions featuring celebrity A-listers.
The problem, of course, was that the issues so important to some of us weren't issues that had risen to the top of the priority list for the entire industry. Racially imbalanced leadership, LGBTQ inclusion, diversity in casting—each topic remained too niche to get the attention of the rosé-sipping C-suite crowd at Cannes.
But I'm optimistic that could change in 2021, even though—or in part because—there is no festival in 2020.
As my colleague Ian Zelaya's interview with Cannes Lions managing director Simon Cook makes clear, diversity will be a central pillar of this year's virtual discussions, obviously coming at a time of global focus on the industry's achingly slow headway on inclusiveness in staffing.
Cannes might have a reputation for being a bit boozy and yacht-y, and that's valid, but the festival organizers have also been doing their part to provide topical programming that everyone should be following.
Perhaps when the world's creative community gathers again in 2021, leaders will show their interests in diversity extend past the moments when it boils over into global protest. Perhaps they'll show up at the sessions they should have been attending all along.
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
[email protected]
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