The 2026 World Cup, which begins June 11, is shaping up to be a logistically challenging proposition for anyone hoping to attend in person, and an equally challenging proposition for marketers hoping to reach them there.
The history of automotive marketing is littered with oversized ambitions — cars bursting through paper walls, sedans perched improbably on mountaintops, sport utility vehicles fording streams that no suburban driver will ever encounter.
The business of connecting business-to-business marketers with the people who create content for them has long resembled a networking event where everyone forgot their name tags.
The television advertising business has spent decades promising that someday, somehow, it would prove that commercials actually make people buy things.
The advertising business has always had a fondness for giving itself awards, a tradition that dates back to the days when creative directors wore turtlenecks unironically and three-martini lunches were billable.
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which convenes each June along the picturesque French seaside boulevard La Croisette, has always served as a reliable barometer of where power resides on Madison Avenue.
The phrase "artificial intelligence" has become so ubiquitous in advertising technology announcements that it now functions less as a description than as a kind of corporate punctuation — a way of signaling that something has been updated recently.