Ad folks may strut from the Croisette into the Palais with a certain degree of swagger, but that doesn't mean they actually have confidence. But Sun Trust Bank CMO Susan Somersille -- with an assist from Strawberry Frog founder Scott Goodson and award-winning actor David Oyelowo -- provided some tips on how to create and sustain it.

The going rumor at Cannes is that organizers are flooding the Festival with youngsters (students get free passes) to ensure their accumulated numbers are high as paid registrations plummeted this year.

Days after opening the Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France, with news that it was tamping down on its influencer marketing policy, Unilever CMO Keith Weed warned of even greater challenges and unintended consequences from digital marketing platforms likely to come in the next five years. "Something that will make life a lot more difficult," Weed said, will be "the whole shift into voice."

That, more or less, was the takeaway from Dentsu's "Androids, AI and the Future Presentation" during the opening day of the Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France. Or, as Kei Wakabayashi, editor of Blkswn Publishers, explained during the session, humans create new technology, in part, to understand what it is to be human. "When a digital book comes out, you get to think about what a book was in the first place," he explained, adding rhetorically, "What was the value of physical books? "I think that goes the same with AI. Something like AI comes along and it really makes …

Want to know how to transform a century-old ad agency culture into one of the creatively hottest and most award- and new business-winning ones? It's easy -- all you need to do is get your hygge on. That's more or less what Grey Advertising Global Creative Chairman Per Pedersen told attendees during his "The Future Belongs to the Rule Breaks" presentation during the opening day today at the Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France. "Hygge," is a Danish word losing translating into what happens when people gather, form bonds and feelings of well-being and togetherness.