Given an increasingly large marketing delegation, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from the creative community at large seemed to bubble under the surface of this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  But creative folks should beware – it’s the marketers who are looking for solutions, and who are responsible mainly for marshaling the creative power around and in support of their brands.

2012 certainly seemed to be “the year of the CMO” at the Festival. The sharp rise in registered delegates - from 9,000 last year to 11,000 this year - was primarily due to the number of clients attending, including delegates from 92 big-name brands and 550 marketing organizations in total.  They had starring roles in seminars, forums and workshops, as well as made appearances in “fringe” events such as the McCannes Rendezvous “Cocktails & Conversations” session, and The CMO Club Roundtable.

Of course many of the usual culprits were there such as P&G, Unilever and Coke, but there were several new brands on the scene too, and of course many brands doing double duty – not just there to speak or see what’s new, but also there to market to the creative community (Google, Adobe, Getty Images, Facebook and Yahoo! to name a few).

In terms of seminars, many CMOs had starring roles: Visa, Coke, P&G, Unilever and Nike.  The Coke seminar with CMO Joe Tripodi (interview) was “blow away” good in every sense – content, creativity and delivery.  Same with the Unilever seminar starring CMO Keith Weed and SVP of Marketing Marc Mathieu.  In both cases, major announcements were made.  Coke announced the latest iteration of its program “The Beat of London 2012” for the Olympics.  

And Unilever launched its global Waterworks™ initiative with Facebook and PSI (Population Services International) as the world’s first open social graph, “using technology to create lasting change”.

There were forums and workshops geared for and starring senior marketers as well.  Dana Anderson of Kraft led a particularly good forum on “5 Sneaky Ways to Get Great Work” which was highly entertaining, and which featured work from a range of brands, including the “Angry Pilgrims” creative for Stove Top Stuffing. 

The workshop led by Brand Learning’s co-founders Mhairi McEwan and Andy Bird was also tailored to the marketing community and for agency folk wanting to better understand the marketing community.  Entitled “The Growth Drivers: Challenging the Way Marketers & Agencies Work Together”, it featured Kerris Bright, CMO of Ideal Standard International, Barry Herstein, recent CMO for Snapfish, and Amanda Mackenzie, CMO for Aviva.

Of the “fringe” events, my panel entitled “Cocktails & Conversations at Cannes”, which was part of the McCann Rendezvous, was especially enlightening in terms of the creative process as seen through the eyes of senior marketers.  Joining me were Wendy Clark of Coca-Cola, John Travis of Adobe, Maryam Banikarim of Gannett, and Michelle Klein for Smirnoff at Diageo.  And we got into a whole host of issues including ownership of creativity, getting the right balance between data and creativity, experimentation and learning, and internal politics.  Arun Sudhaman wrote an excellent re-cap on the session for The Holmes Report.

Another “fringe” event, The CMO Club’s CMO Roundtable, was kicked off by CMO Club CEO Pete Krainik and included senior marketers from Yahoo!, Sovereign/Santander Bank, Carlsberg, Ferrero, General Mills, Heineken, Google, Beiersdorf (Nivea), Philips and Unilever.  Hosted by EffectiveBrands and MOFILM, the conversation focused how to best leverage global brands, using frameworks, best practice sharing, story-telling and engaging in the conversation.

And marketing delegates were not confined to the upper echelon.  2012 was the second year for the Cannes Creative Academy for Young Marketers (under 30) for young marketers who want to learn about creativity, with Dean of the Academy, former global marketing officer for P&G Jim Stengel, who also earlier this year launched his book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies.

So while creatives may not be overly enthusiastic about an increasing number of marketers flocking to the Cannes Lions, they should at least be appreciative that marketers are taking an increasing interest in creativity and how to encourage best-in-class creativity, and that they respect the Cannes Lions enough to support the Festival with truly amazing content, major announcements and thought-provoking conversations.

As Claire Beale, editor of the UK's Campaign magazine, said, "This is a serious, full-on business event that's a thoroughly justifiable way of spending a week out of the office and even a fairly justifiable way of spending several thousands of expense-account pounds [dollars].  It's perhaps not as much fun as it used to be, but then, what is?"

Last week’s CMO Club Summit presented an array of content eagerly consumed by CMOs attending the two-day conference.  And while not all of the subjects included a digital element in the title of the session, digital, search and social certainly was woven throughout most of the presentations, not surprisingly.

So, when the question arose over why everything was about digital during our final lunch, I wondered how someone could even ask such a thing.  Isn't digital pervasive in every aspect of marketing; indeed in every aspect of business. I'm guessing this CMO was just concerned that so many topics focused on digital and social media almost to the detriment of leaving out other traditional topics – rather than how digital is woven through all we do as marketers.  This CMO went on to clarify her point by suggesting additional content around more traditional marketing topics like advertising, promotions, creativity, etc.  Perhaps CMOs are getting weary of the digital emphasis.

And yet, just yesterday Advertising Age published a story about more growth in digital.  “Last year, US agencies generated 30.3% of revenue, or $10.1 billion, from digital, compared with 28% in 2010,” according to the article.  “Digital revenue at agencies surged 16.4% in 2011, with growth across agency disciplines.”

Clearly digital is here to stay, thrive and expand with new technologies, platforms and devices.  So, the subject matter at the CMO Club Summit around digital transformation, innovation in search, delivering with digital, ranking high on Google, innovation in mobile and bridging the digital divide were most clearly relevant for today’s CMOs.  But perhaps we should also be thinking more cleverly around topics that are either languishing or relatively unexplored such as interactive television, diversity marketing, sponsorship and the like.

As a strong advocate for digital, I’ll happily gobble-up content around the subject and I’m always eager to hear about new developments.  Equally though, I worry that we just grasp at the bright new shiny toys and forget our grounding in old-fashioned creativity, story-telling and coming up with the big idea which can be integrated across new – as well as more traditional – channels and platforms.