Our Rendezvous at Cannes

By: Genevieve Wheeler

June 28, 2024

Last week, Nexxen – alongside many of our peers and partners – had the pleasure of heading to the Cote d’Azur for the Cannes Lions. Between meetings, more meetings and happy hours overflowing with rosé, we had the joy of sitting down with some of our brilliant clients to talk about all things empathy in leadership, sustainability in media and first-party data – most notably at The Female Quotient’s Equality Lounge, Sport Beach by Stagwell, Good-Loop House and Adweek House at Cannes.

First up was a panel hosted and moderated by The Female Quotient on Monday afternoon – Empathy in Action: How Female Leaders are Shaping Inclusive Customer Experiences – which, as the title suggests, was centered around themes of empathy and inclusion. Our Chief Customer Officer, Kara Puccinelli, joined C-Suite executives from the likes of Ipsy, Tinuiti and DEPT to discuss the ways in which empathy can be a superpower, especially in leadership. They also addressed the significance of crafting diverse teams who not only reflect, but truly understand the varied needs of your organization’s customer base. Anecdotally, Kara shared that getting to know your customer on a one-to-one, human level and using their feedback to create the kinds of experiences (and, in our case, technology products) they want is imperative.

Next, on Tuesday morning, came an intimate roundtable at Good-Loop House – Truth v. Opinion: What Should We Count When Measuring Carbon? There, our VP, Enterprise Sales, Ariel Deitz, spoke about the recently released GARM guidelines for sustainability in advertising. The new guidelines specify that the carbon footprint of the advertiser no longer includes the publishers’ own footprint. They mandate advertisers make campaigns greener and more performant, to the benefit of us all, which Ariel succinctly highlighted in this open and honest forum.

On Tuesday afternoon, Kara joined another insightful panel – Unlocking Customer Loyalty for First Class Growth – this time at Adweek House at Cannes. By nature of their business (e.g. you can only board a plane with a verified identity) and through their MileagePlus loyalty program, United Airlines has access to highly accurate, first-party customer data. Now, through Kinective Media – United’s just-launched commerce media network, leveraging the Nexxen platform as a launch partner – brands can utilize this data to craft and curate ad experiences throughout the consumer journey. It’s exactly what Kara sat down to talk about with them – as well as our longtime partner, Molson Coors – in this ‘group chat’ moderated by Adweek’s Editor-in-Chief Ryan Joe. As Kara pointed out, there is nothing more powerful than this kind of data when it comes to reaching audiences in activation stages, and we’re excited to see what lies ahead.

Our Chief Commercial Officer, Chance Johnson, also stood on the Croissette to speak with Aaron Gallagher, Managing Director of Sales for United Airlines, about the opportunities presented by Kinective Media – particularly for brands. The two were accompanied by Elspeth Rollert, CEO of Stagwell Marketing Cloud, who has direct insight into the ways in which Stagwell’s client base can take advantage of this data-rich program to supercharge their campaigns. We were especially thrilled to have this discussion on the heels of announcing our data partnership with Stagwell, which enables the agency network and its customers to leverage Nexxen’s unified, proprietary solutions within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud.

Of course, this week stirred up more than just excitement about first-party data strategies. It served as a reminder that growth is created and nurtured in so many ways, including through compassionate leadership, sustainable mindsets and data-driven insights (to name a few!). As we unpack our bags, we’ll continue to reflect on the conversations we had this week – on panels, podcasts, roundtables and in the many meetings we hosted at our suite. Salut and santé to a fabulous week – we’re already counting down to next year!