The Past and Future of Digital Marketing: A View From the Cannes Cyber Jury

I had occasion to think about internet ages, and what really, actually changes over 10 years in marketing as I chaired last week’s Cannes Lions Cyber jury—a role I was also honored to play a decade earlier. As I looked back at what we saw and didn’t see coming, I kept thinking of the famous phrase, attributed to someone vaguely “cyber.”*

“We overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.”

Colleen DeCourcy

When you look at the big winners from 2008, you see work that was a product of its time. We had just a little more time for craft and whimsy, and—even more important—it was the pre-Big Platform era, when we were still building things for brands out of little pieces of the internet. The beloved, Grand Prix-winning Uniqlo “Uniqlock” was a great example of this, wonderfully weaving together web video, widgets, bloggers and creativity.

If one of the 2008 Grand Prix winners was a harbinger of what was coming in digital marketing, it might have been “SOL Comments” for Scandinavia Online. A copywriter penning relevant, real-time, funny comments into a multitude of ad spaces via a (then-newfangled) interactive tablet. That certainly seems like a precursor to the last few years of obsession with programmatic, as-near-to-real-time-as-possible social content publishing.

“Whopper Freakout,” a gold Lion winner that year, went on to become a de facto style of online “viral marketing” that birthed more than enough ostensibly real, “WTF will happen next?” videos over the ensuing years. Now, hidden-camera, reality-TV-style ad films seem to be dying off. In their place we watch uplifting human mini-docs about lives made better by Western ideologies, investments and laundry soap. The internet wants to teach good behavior and moralism through example—a social medium of video-laced humanity reaching upwards to the sky.

So, we’ve evolved in the last 10 years in terms of the cultural zeitgeist, in terms of media and in terms of some of the technology deployed. But I think the bigger lesson from the last 10 years might lie in the thing that hasn’t changed, and that’s our tendency toward incrementalism. I come back to that quote, and the industry-shaking things that have been made possible in 10 years, and I wonder if our industry is focused on recognizing, and producing, those things.

It’s a subject I also touched on recently in a piece about creativity and taking leaps. I noted that, as an industry, in our quest for relevance and attention, we can get distracted by outputs and channel-firsts.

As creators, we have to experiment. We have to test the limits of new technology. We also have to digest and reflect culture at unprecedented speeds. Among other purposes they serve, awards recognize this experimentation.

But this focus, if it’s the only focus, could limit us.

The brands and businesses that are really making change today, and creating news beyond award shows (and beyond advertising), aren’t just harnessing the latest tech and techniques in buzzy ways. They have a big idea in the largest sense, and they work relentlessly to manifest that idea in every way that’s relevant to their customers, over time.

Nike is no stranger to the ad awards podium. But its success is based on a long-term brand vision. Things like Nike+ and Breaking 2—things that win awards, yes—are products of that enduring and guiding vision. IBM’s Watson has already made movie trailers, dabbled in fashion and beaten legendary game-show contestants, but its creators note that the cognitive computing platform is “just the first step on a very, very long road.” GE decided to go all in on telling its science story via content 10 years ago, and last year made an iTunes-topping, Lion-winning podcast.

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