259. Big tech, AI and the future of attention: what you missed in Cannes

Think advertising is just TikTok, Instagram, or TV? Think again.

At Cannes Lions, a major industry summit, Big Tech set the agenda for what’s next in AI, branding, and attention. This is your insider's summary.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How offline spaces are powering smart digital brands 

• What AI personas are, and how to use them to test product and brand ideas faster (and cheaper)

• Why most agencies are missing half the audience — and what that means if you’re building a mass-market product

If you’re building or marketing a tech product — whether you’re in a startup or a large org — this episode gives you a real-world edge, minus the fluff.

Chapters

FREE COURSE:

5 Tech Concepts Every Business Leader Needs To Know

Growth Through Innovation

If your organisation wants to drive revenue through innovation, book a call with us here.

Our workshops and innovation strategies have helped Constellation Brands, the Royal Bank of Canada and Oxford University.

Listen to Tech for Non-Techies on:

• Apple

• Spotify

• YouTube

• Amazon Podcasts

• Stitcher

• Pandora

Transcript

Sophia Matveeva (00:00.352)
You might have never heard of the Can Lions, but it's where Big Tech reveals its next play. So for example, this year, WhatsApp announced that they're launching ads and I was there. And in this episode, I'm going to tell you the key trends that matter for your venture now.

Sophia Matveeva (00:19.246)
Welcome to the Tech for non-Turkeys podcast. I'm your host, tech entrepreneur, executive coach at Chicago Booth MBA, Sophia Matilda. My aim here is to help you have a great career in the digital age. In a time when even your coffee shop has an app, you simply have to speak Turkish. On this podcast, I share core technology concepts, help you relate them to business outcomes, and most importantly,

Share practical advice on what you can do to become a digital leader today. If you want to have a great career in the digital age, this podcast is for you. Hello, smart people. How are you today? If we haven't met yet. Hello, I'm Sophia Matveva. I'm a non-technical founder who has built tech businesses from scratch and helped governments and Fortune 500s upskill for the digital economy.

And this show is where non-technical founders learn how to build their ventures without drowning in tech jargon or learning to code. So if that's your goal, then hit subscribe. Well, I have just returned from the can lines 2025. And if you've never heard of what the can lines is, then don't worry, because by the end of this episode, you'll know not only what it is, but why it matters and what trends are most relevant to you, whether you're building a startup.

or running a brand or innovating inside a large corporation. And this episode is like your insider debrief with takeaways on AI, on branding and where attention is going next. And if you enjoy this, my dear smart person, please take a moment to subscribe, to rate and to review this show because it really helps me and my team keep on creating this free content for you. So that's your guilt trip. And by the way, I meant to bring you this can-line-stubing

next last week rather, but basically after meetings and events and recording plans, I completely lost my voice and basically had to rest. So that's why we had a week off. If you notice the silence, thank you for your patience. And now let's get on with it. lesson one, what is can lines and why does it matter to you? So basically it is a festival of advertising that takes place in the south of France in June.

Sophia Matveeva (02:35.071)
And it started as the Oscars of advertising, and I think in the 50s or the 60s. And it's where the best advertising campaigns would win a line. That's like the Oscar. But today, I mean, that's still important, but really now it's more of a power summit for basically the global attention economy. And wherever you're listening to this, wherever you're watching this, then I bet that company, whether it's Spotify or Apple or YouTube, they were there.

Because basically Big Tech runs the show. So Meta had a massive beach. They literally rented out a massive beach in Cannes. Microsoft also had a massive beach. Pinterest had a slightly small one, but also not bad. Amazon rented out an entire port. And TikTok took over one of the luxury hotel gardens. So basically, why do you care? Well, the reason why we all care is because what Big Tech announces at Cannes is affect

everybody building digital product, because most likely you are going to be advertising your digital product on one of these companies, or you're going to have your API is linked to one of these companies. So you are going to somehow be part of their infrastructure. So what they're doing and what trends and products they are announcing, that's really important for all of us. So, for example, even if we just look at the consumer side of things, for example,

WhatsApp announced that they're launching ads and they chose to do it at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. So basically, it means that even the most private platform is now part of this public attention economy. So if your business touches content, if it touches marketing, such as AI or consumer tech, I really suggest that you basically dive into what happens in the Cannes Lions. So

One of the key things is that basically everybody, like all the panels, somehow mentioned AI. AI was absolutely everywhere. And frankly, it was the same last year. But most of the content on AI was really fluffy. It was kind of similar to what I saw at the Economist Innovation Summit, which I did an episode about a couple of months ago. So yes, everybody's talking about how it's important and it's changing things and it's great.

Sophia Matveeva (04:53.866)
and you know, let's keep the human in the loop, but you know, I basically just told you what they said and they would somehow string it out over like a half an hour talk. And it reminded me of one a few years ago. Remember when Mark Zuckerberg decided that we're all going to live with the metaverse. So Cat Lions was one year, it was all about the metaverse and web three. And it was basically a little bit, of it disingenuous, I'd say.

It wasn't quite as just it wasn't quite as delusional. But what people weren't talking about is the number of jobs that are either going because of AI or basically the number of jobs that are not going to exist. especially in the advertising industry, in the content production industry, a lot of the junior jobs that basically not really being recruited anymore. And that's also the case for junior programmers. But.

I do understand why, you know, if you are an advertising exec and you're sitting in the yacht in Cannes and you've just fired lots of your junior people, talking about that might not be a really good look. But there was one use case that I thought was really interesting and that came from WPP, WPP, one of the really big advertising conglomerates.

they said that they have used AI to create 25 synthetic personas. So basically different types of people. So one of the people that they spoke about was they've got this persona, her name is Hannah. She's a small restaurant owner. And basically they understand her likes, they know where she goes, like where she goes shopping and what she reads and so on. And so when they come up with advertising ideas or product ideas, they basically...

show it to Hannah and see how she responds. And this is interesting because this is actually something that all of you can do, you know, just using ChaiGPC or Clawd or whichever platform that you're doing, you can basically create a persona. And I would just start with basically feeding in some prompts about, okay, what do you need from me to make a synthetic persona and go from that. We might, do you want another episode on how to make synthetic personas? We can do that.

Sophia Matveeva (07:06.835)
I actually learned a lot from that panel. But anyway, you can literally show a fake person, a fake ad, and then get feedback. And that's really useful because you can test ideas for creative and you can test ideas for new products without actually, like before you actually start speaking to people, which is useful. You should still speak to people, but it's basically a useful thing to do. Okay. Another trend that I think

is really, really useful for people to know about, especially if you're at very early stages and you basically have no money, is that media is everywhere. So I don't want you to think of advertising only as TV or TikTok or Facebook, because these platforms, they can be really expensive. Advertising is actually hotels and gyms and elevators and beaches. Advertising can be done anywhere where there are humans. So, for example,

Marriott, when you think of the Marriott, what do you think of? I mean, I think of a hotel, you know, somewhere nice to stay when I'm away. But actually, Marriott is a media brand, because if you think about it, you know, if any of your Marriott Bonvoy members, you will get their newsletter, their newsletter reaches loads and loads of people. There's advertising space there. If you're in a hotel elevator and that hotel is run by the Marriott, you will see that there are ads in the elevator. Basically, there are lots and lots of opportunities to place ads.

in the Marriott Hotel because basically there's lots of attention. There are lots of people that. So this, I think, matters for everybody who is budget constrained, because if you're growing a brand with no money, look at overlooked channels. Don't only think, OK, we can't afford TV and we can't matter, so we can't do anything. Actually, there are lots of lots of ways to get your brand out there. So.

When Tech for Non-Techies first started out, I didn't raise any money and we didn't have any investors. So basically we just had to use our chutzpah. So Tech for Non-Techies, we grew through alumni newsletters. So literally just me writing to my former alma mater and saying, okay, I'm doing this webinar for non-technical founders. Can you put it in your alumni newsletter? I did a bunch of webinars for universities. I also asked my friends to pass the...

Sophia Matveeva (09:28.651)
podcasts and webinars out through WhatsApp groups. And basically that worked. And so when I had no money for advertising, I just looked at where are there people? How can I get my brand there? So ask yourself, where do my people already pay attention and how can I show up there? Last point. So I noticed that there was a big shift in how people talked about diversity content. So in

past years, DEI was a huge, huge thing in the can lines. And I think one year it was pretty much everybody, like pretty much all the people talked about. And I even remember speaking to somebody who was a CEO of a Fortune 100 company. And he said, you know, at board level, we now only talk about diversity, we don't even talk about the numbers. So diversity was not completely dead. And people, you know, there were still discussions, there were some panels about it, but just not as much.

But what I noticed is that there were some, you know, DIY type influences, social justice activists, but there weren't any right wing or MAGA influences. Like I didn't see a single one. And honestly, I thought that this was quite troubling because, you know, if you are advertising a mass market brand, let's say you're advertising Coca-Cola, you're advertising McDonald's, you know, these things are supposed to appeal to a very large amount of people.

And so if we look at the American election, we know what most Americans voted for and what most Americans said that they care about. And so, you know, they voted for the Republican Party. And so it was really bizarre to kind of just have this massive hole of what actually most people said they care about. And this concerned me. And I want this to concern you too, because...

If you're working in a company that is not aimed at the left side of the political spectrum, you might have trouble finding an advertising agency that knows how to speak to your consumer. Equally, this is also an opportunity because if you're thinking, OK, should I start an ad agency? Well, maybe, you know, given what I saw, you know, there were massive brand execs, massive agency execs, basically talking about how they really dislike the current American administration and,

Sophia Matveeva (11:46.803)
Whether I like them or not, that's not the point. The point is if you are creating a mass market brand, you need to be able to understand how mass market consumers think and also be in touch with their influences and can just completely ignore that. And so just be careful. You know, when you're looking at the trends coming out of these kind of elite institutions, elite organizations, they are

elitist left. So basically just be careful if you're starting to work with one of these agencies and you want to build a mass market brand, really talk to them about, how are they engaging with the right side of the political spectrum? And finally, if you're not going to be hiring any agencies because you don't, you know, you're not at that stage. And my advice is speak to your actual users and, know, and speak to them in a way that you're not leading them.

but ask them what matters to them, what influences are they following? know, basically don't shame them. You know, even if they listen to somebody you really, really don't like, that is useful information. You know, maybe you decide not to work with that influencer, but it is useful information. Don't assume that because you think something that somebody else is going to think the same thing. OK, so what did we learn? Let's quickly sum up. number one, big tech shapes the creative agenda.

So you need to know what big tech is doing, even if you are building a tiny tech startup or a tiny ad agency. AI, so the second thing is AI is changing how you work and you can actually build synthetic personas to test product ideas. And I think that's really, really cool. And I'm going to be playing around with that and teaching my students how to do that. And number three, super useful for the early stage people. Attention is everywhere.

So great brands show up in unexpected places. Just remember Marriott is a media brand, which is really surprising, right? So just think about where are my people? How can I reach them? Because often it's actually much cheaper to get into say a WhatsApp group that it is to advertise and matter. Okay. I hope you have found this useful. I probably expect that you did because you're still here.

Sophia Matveeva (14:07.243)
And if you did, then please leave the show a rating and a review. And if you've already done that, then please share this with a smart friend who wants to stay ahead in business and in tech. Thank you very much for listening. It's been a pleasure spending time with you. Have a wonderful day and I shall be back in your delightful smart years next week. Ciao.