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What Are We Rewarding?

Every June, the high priests of creativity descend on Cannes
to baptize consumerism in gold.

We wear the right linen.
Whisper the right buzzwords.
Applaud campaigns that make the world feel better
—while keeping the system exactly as it is.

But maybe the question isn’t what wins.
Maybe it’s why we’re still awarding anything that worships the market above all.

Capitalism Makes a Poor Muse

We’ve mistaken reach for relevance.
Profit for purpose.
Cleverness for conscience.

Advertising was never neutral—
But now we award its best lies,
its cleanest distractions,
its highest-performing manipulations.

If the work doesn’t question the system—
It upholds it.

And we celebrate that?
We dress it in titanium?

Glass is the Only Lion That Breaks the Spell

The Glass Lion doesn’t care about ROI.
It asks: Who was empowered?
What inequality was challenged?
Did this leave behind justice—not just impressions?

And here’s what’s radical:

  • The work doesn’t have to sell.
  • It has to liberate.
  • It has to leave behind proof of dignity restored.

That’s not capitalism.
That’s creative resistance, its the only award that really matters in a post pandemic world full of wars, volatility, and injustice! This one should be the one you always aim for as an agency!

Everything Else Is Complicity in Couture

Let’s tell the truth:

Most Cannes Lions go to work that pleases the system.
They flatter the world as it is.
They use rebellion as branding—but stay loyal to power.

We give Gold to campaigns that simulate empathy
without ever shifting structures, without even changing culture, without even changing the world better.

They don’t challenge capitalism.
They accessorize it.

Time to Flip the Script

What if Cannes wasn’t built around categories that serve the market—
but around ones that dismantle its harm?

What if we would expand the notion of Glass into every category—not as a side dish, but the main course.

Because a Lion that doesn’t protect the people?

It’s just a logo with teeth.

An Award Show or an Autopsy?

Cannes faces a choice.

It can continue to be an arena for marketing’s most exquisite distractions—
or it can become a stage for work that actually moves us forward.

But that means one thing:

Decenter capitalism.
Center impact.
Make awards serve justice, not just sales.

Not all creativity deserves applause.
Not all lions deserve gold.

Until every award is held to the standard of the Glass,
we’re just clapping for the architects of decline of our future!

If your creativity feeds the system and not the people—
you don’t deserve a Lion.

Why AI-Generated Ads Are Killing the One Thing Money Can’t Buy: Meaning

There is something unsettling about watching a machine try to seduce you.

It can generate images of silk, gold, and bone structure so symmetrical it feels divine. It can mimic opulence with terrifying precision. But you walk away cold. Not because it wasn’t beautiful—but because no one bled for it.

Luxury, at its core, is not a product. It is a performance of care. A theater of intention. A whisper that says: “Someone made this. And they made it for you.”

That whisper dies the moment a brand discloses: This ad was generated by AI.

And consumers—instinctively, almost viscerally—pull back.

This isn’t speculation. In March 2025, researchers at Tarleton University’s Sam Pack College of Business conducted a series of experiments that lifted the veil on AI in luxury advertising.

They found that when people were told an ad was AI-generated, their perception of the brand soured—even if the ad itself was flawless. It wasn’t the aesthetics that offended. It was the implication that no human effort was involved. No obsession. No sleepless nights. Just pixels, puppeteered by code.

Because in luxury, effort is the aura. You’re not buying the bag, the scent, the silk—you’re buying the story of the hands that made it.

“Luxury without labor is just a JPEG with a price tag.”

AI doesn’t yearn. It doesn’t dream. It doesn’t understand what it means to long for something across a lifetime and finally touch it. And so when it speaks the language of luxury, it sounds like a tourist repeating poetry phonetically. The form is there. But the soul is missing.

In the same study, researchers found something else. When AI-generated visuals were truly original—surreal, impossible, avant-garde—the backlash weakened. Consumers were more forgiving when the machine dared to be weird, not just perfect. Novelty redeemed automation. Why? Because it felt like art, not optimization.

This is the thin line AI must walk: between mimicry and magic. Between replication and revelation.

What brands must now realize is this: you can’t fake the sacred.

You can’t outsource reverence. Not when your entire mythology is built on the illusion of effort, exclusivity, and the impossible-to-scale. When luxury becomes scalable, it becomes ordinary. And nothing kills desire faster than convenience.

The real scandal isn’t that AI is being used. It’s how cheaply it’s being used.
Not as a collaborator in creation—but as a replacement for it.

“We don’t fall in love with perfection—we fall in love with presence.”

So what now? Must we banish AI from the house of beauty?

No. But it must be tamed. Not in the name of nostalgia, but in the name of mystery.

Let it enhance the myth—not expose the machinery. Let it generate visions too strange for human hands—but never let it erase the hands entirely. Let it serve the story—not become the storyteller.

Use it to deepen the dream. Not to save on production costs.

“The new luxury isn’t scarcity. It’s soul.”

AI can make images. But it cannot make meaning.
Because meaning requires longing. It requires imperfection. It requires a face behind the mask.

And so, in an age of perfect replicas, the true luxury will be this:

Proof that someone cared.

Based on the study “The Luxury Dilemma: When AI-Generated Ads Miss the Mark,”
Tarleton University, Sam Pack College of Business, March 2025.

Why Weak Thinking Is Starving Creativity

A strange thing is happening in adland.

Budgets are holding. Tools are multiplying. Content is everywhere.
And yet—campaigns are feeling flatter, safer, forgettable.
We’re showing up more. But saying less.

According to Lions’ State of Creativity 2025 report, we now know why:

51% of brands say their insights are too weak to fuel bold creativity.

The very oxygen of original work—insight—is running low.

Creativity Isn’t Dead. It’s Malnourished.

The study surveyed 1,000 marketers and creatives globally.
Only 13% said they were “very good” at developing high-quality insights.
And over half admitted their strategic thinking wasn’t strong enough to support brave ideas.

This isn’t about copy or color palettes.
It’s about the starting point—the thinking beneath the campaign.

When that’s soft, everything collapses.
We don’t create culture. We decorate it.

The Great Disconnect

Here’s where it gets messier.

26% of brands believe they’re good at generating insights.
Only 10% of agencies agree.

That’s not a disagreement. That’s a misalignment.
And it shows up in the work: campaigns with zero tension, zero edge, and zero memory.

It’s a quiet crisis—because no one gets fired for playing it safe.
But no one gets remembered for it, either.

Why This Is Happening

The report points to three key reasons:

  1. No one agrees on what a “good insight” actually is.
    29% of agencies said the core problem is not knowing how to define it.
  2. Insight development isn’t prioritized.
    It’s not funded. It’s not briefed. It’s not protected.
    (But production timelines? Always urgent.)
  3. Brands struggle to react to culture in real time.
    57% said they can’t respond fast enough to cultural moments.
    Insight, by the time it surfaces, is already stale.

As one respondent put it:

“Capturing cultural moments requires real-time data and courage. But fear of failure gets in the way.”

What Insight Isn’t

  • It’s not a stat.
  • Not a demographic.
  • Not “Millennials love experiences.”
  • Not pulled from a deck last year and recycled today.

Insight is friction. It’s clarity on a human truth your category hasn’t touched yet.
It’s the gut-punch behind the campaign—not the headline.

Without it, the work may look good.
But it won’t feel anything.

What This Means for Brands

If creativity is how we stand out, insight is how we break in.
Into minds. Into culture. Into relevance.

Without it, your ad becomes wallpaper.
With it, your ad becomes signal.

And right now, in an industry that can generate 10,000 versions of an idea with AI in under a minute,insight is the last unfair advantage.

This isn’t a creativity crisis. It’s a thinking one.

We’ve never had more tools, more channels, more data—
and yet, we keep mistaking noise for impact.

Without real insight, we’re just adding color to the void.
Insight is what gives a campaign a spine, a soul, and a shot at mattering.
Without it, we’re not communicating—we’re just performing.

And in a world flooded with content,
only the brands that see deeper will ever be seen at all.

Because profit lives in your self-loathing. If you ever felt enough, you’d stop buying.
Based on Vogue Business: “Future Beauty Standards Are Extreme—How Should Marketing Respond?”

You were never meant to feel beautiful. Just almost.

Almost confident. Almost worthy. Almost enough.
Enough to chase—but never enough to arrive.

That’s not a flaw in the system.
That is the system.

And now, it’s automated.

THE NEW GOD IS THE FEED

As Vogue Business reports, beauty’s future is extreme—driven by AI, injectables, gene-editing, and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. But this isn’t evolution. It’s aesthetic escalation. Your face is no longer personal—it’s programmatic.

TikTok and Instagram don’t mirror your taste. They install it.
Every swipe is a biometric confession. Every filter is a blueprint for your next insecurity.

The algorithm isn’t reflecting your desires.
It’s writing them.

Your “ideal self” isn’t who you dream of being—it’s who the feed can monetize.

FLAW IS THE FUEL

The beauty economy doesn’t run on confidence.
It runs on calibrated self-hate.

Not devastation—just dissatisfaction.
A subtle ache. A glitch in the mirror.

That’s the zone where profit lives.
Because if you ever felt enough, you’d stop scrolling, stop purchasing, stop complying.

Instead, you’re served a feed of almosts:

  • Almost natural.
  • Almost achievable.
  • Almost real.

Every ad says the same thing:
You’re one product away from permission to exist.

SKIN AS STATUS, FACE AS FILTER

We’ve entered the era of face capitalism.

Vogue notes how skin quality is becoming the new class divide. Not what you wear—what you’re made of.
You are now your texture, tone, symmetry, inflammation score. There’s no fashion to change. Just flesh to optimize.

And optimization is infinite.

DNA-personalized skincare. AI dermatology. Injectable “tweakments” that promise improvement without identity.
Even your rebellion—your bare face, your stretch marks—has been made into a monetizable aesthetic.

This isn’t self-care.
It’s cosmetic compliance.

BEAUTY ISN’T PERSONAL—IT’S POLITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Vogue surveys over 600 consumers and uncovers a split:
Some dream of more natural, inclusive beauty.
Others sense the trap—ideals are not widening. They’re mutating.

Not just unachievable—unhuman.

Beauty is no longer a preference.
It’s a passport.

Don’t fit the aesthetic protocol?
Fewer likes. No virality. No matches.
No visibility.

The algorithm doesn’t hate you.
It just can’t process your kind of face.

DESIRE HAS BEEN OUTSOURCED

You used to know what you liked.
Now you wait for the algorithm to tell you.

You don’t want to look beautiful.
You want to look machine-readable.

This is the real horror:
The homogenization of attraction.
The standardization of seduction.
The death of human taste.

You’ve been trained to crave conformity—and call it empowerment.

REBELLION IS A SYSTEM ERROR

Vogue is right to ask how marketing should respond.
But the better question is:
How do we burn the script?

Because self-love, as it’s sold now, is just a better brand of bondage.
Even your resistance—“authentic,” “natural,” “unfiltered”—has been co-opted.

Rebellion isn’t a new product.
It’s a refusal.

So here’s the resistance:

  • Keep the wrinkle.
  • Let the filter glitch.
  • Post the photo that doesn’t perform.
  • Love your face like it’s not a platform.

Because if you ever truly felt enough…
The entire economy of insecurity would collapse.

And they can’t afford that.

Because One Day, Someone You’ll Never Meet Will Live With What You Left Behind

We like to think the future is something that just happens.
But really, it’s something we’re building—bit by bit, post by post, decision by decision.

And most of what we’re making?
Won’t stay in the past.

It’ll live on in ways we can’t predict.
In algorithms that echo.
In ideas that stick around longer than we do.
In the systems, stories, and shortcuts we hand down—without even realizing it.

So here’s the uncomfortable truth:

The future is going to live in the world we leave behind.
And that world is shaped by what we create right now.

Think Bigger Than the Feed

Most of us create for the moment.
We optimize for reach. For relevance. For right now.

But the real question is:

Would you still make it if your great-grandkid was watching?
Would you be proud if they found it?
Or would you say, “We didn’t know better back then”?

Because the truth is—we do know better.
We just don’t always act like it.

A Simple Thought Experiment

Picture this:
A kid stumbles on your work a hundred years from now.
Your product. Your code. Your writing. Your name.

What do they learn about you?
What do they learn about us?

Do they feel seen?
Or disappointed?
Inspired—or embarrassed?

Not Legacy. Just Responsibility.

This isn’t about being perfect.
It’s not about writing the next great novel or building the next Apple

It’s about doing your job like it matters.
Making your thing like someone else might one day rely on it.
Because they might.

Whether it’s a clean API, an honest message, a brand that chooses people over profit—
it all adds up.

And someone will inherit the sum.

So Here’s the Deal

✅ Make stuff that’s built to last.
✅ Say the thing others are afraid to say.
✅ Leave behind something that doesn’t need to be explained away.
✅ If it’s not helpful or honest, maybe don’t hit publish.

✅ Stop making a digital landfill. Most of the internet—especially social media and brand content—is an endless dump of noise, not signal. Don’t add to the trash.
✅ And when you’re not sure what to do—imagine someone younger than you reading it in 50 years.

Create like you’re going to be misunderstood now—but deeply appreciated later.
Because sometimes, later is the point.

Create for the unborn.
Not for claps. Not for clicks.
For the ones who have to live with what we leave behind.

We didn’t guard it. We leased it. For €380.

The night above Athens lit up—not with constellations or gods, but with a sneaker.
Outlined in drones.
Branded with Adidas.
Floating above the Parthenon like a corporate halo.

€380.
That’s what it cost to turn the sky over Western civilization’s most sacred site into a product launch.

Not per drone.
Not per second.
Total.

The Ministry of Culture said they didn’t know.
Which means they’re either lying, or irrelevant.
Possibly both.

The Ritual of Soft Colonization

@theculturemuse

Stumbled on this in #athens tonight #drone #droneshow #adidas #greece #ellas #ellinikotiktok #foryoupage❤️❤️ #fyp

♬ Light in the Dark – Violin Sky

This wasn’t a marketing stunt. It was a symbolic coup.

The gods have been replaced.
Not by philosophers or poets.
By CMOs and drone operators.

Adidas didn’t run a campaign.
They performed a ritual:
— Erase the sacred
— Replace it with spectacle, replace it with nonsense
— Watch the cameras roll

Art Gets Denied. Ads Get Airspace.

Oscar-nominated director Yorgos Lanthimos was denied access to film at the Acropolis.
But Adidas?
They get prime time, front row to eternity—no questions asked.

Because in this new Greece:
If you tell stories, you wait.
If you sell shoes, the sky is yours.

Who’s Really Behind the Curtain?

Let’s be clear:
Adidas didn’t do this alone.
They had help—from the local agency and brand teams who knew the terrain, looped the loopholes, and signed off.

Let’s name what this is: Cultural laundering.

They didn’t just drop drones.
They laundered visibility through heritage—and turned sacred space into a hype reel.

To the Greek agency who helped this happen:
You didn’t elevate the brand.
You sold your history for a case study.

To the marketers who called this visionary:
You don’t understand legacy.
You understand reach.

This Wasn’t Creativity. It Was Cowardice.

Agencies love to posture about purpose, storytelling, culture.
But when faced with power, they fold.

Because it’s easier to fly a logo over the Acropolis than to build meaning that lasts.

The Real Cost of the Campaign

€380.
That’s all it took to dim the light of Athena.

That’s not clever.
That’s not disruptive.
That’s desperate.

If we sell our myths for the price of a sneaker,
What will we have left
When the batteries die?

The gods didn’t leave us.
We traded them.


For impressions.
For metrics.
For branded content.

The Parthenon glows now—not with truth or triumph—but with product.

And maybe that was the point all along.

Because just days before this stunt lit up the sky, Greek politicians quietly voted to allow family members of public officials to own companies abroad.
No scrutiny. No shame. No uproar.

So maybe the sneaker in the sky dominating the news today was no accident. Maybe this is a way to deflect public opinions.
Maybe it’s just branding catching up with politics.
A culture where everything sacred is for sale, and everyone with power is off the record.

The question is no longer “How did this happen?”
It’s:

What haven’t we sold yet? If our myths, monuments, and morals are all for sale—what does it even mean to be a nation?

Jaguar’s failed rebrand reveals more than bad creative. It exposes the cowardice of brand leadership.

Jaguar’s latest campaign said, “Copy Nothing.”
But what they launched copied one thing perfectly: the corporate tradition of blaming the agency when leadership gets it wrong.

No cars. No curves. No roar.
Just abstract visuals, minimalist slogans, and a branding exercise so out of touch, even Elon Musk publicly mocked it. The campaign was lambasted as empty, confusing, and emotionally tone-deaf. A luxury car brand… that showed no cars.

The public hated it.
Critics laughed at it.
And @Jaguar?
They fired the ad agency.

But here’s the real story: Who briefed the agency? Who approved the decks? Who nodded in the boardroom and said, “Yes, let’s hide the cars”?

The creatives didn’t conjure this campaign in a vacuum. Someone paid for it, approved it, championed it.

That someone is still sitting in Jaguar’s leadership.

The Real Problem: Vision Without Accountability

This isn’t about a bad campaign. This is about a broken model—one where agencies are hired as scapegoats, not strategic partners.

In today’s brand world, storytelling is strategy. The brief is the vision. If that vision is flawed, no amount of creative genius can salvage it. You can’t out-art direct a confused identity.

And Jaguar’s identity right now? A luxury brand sprinting toward electric futurism while ghosting its legacy, its product, and its soul.

What did they expect the agency to do—turn vapor into velocity?

When the Brief Is Rotten, the Brand Fails

Let’s be clear: agencies aren’t perfect. But they don’t control the product, the pricing, or the internal politics. They don’t choose whether the car appears in the campaign. That comes from the client.

We’ve seen this before:

Agencies don’t greenlight madness. They’re handed it.

The Cowardice of Creative Blame

What we’re watching isn’t just a brand misstep. It’s a case study in corporate cowardice. A company trying to reinvent itself—without the courage to own its decisions.

The truth? Jaguar’s problem isn’t the ad agency. It’s that the people steering the ship don’t know what destination they’re heading toward—so they blame the compass when they get lost.

A New Standard for Brand Leadership

We need to stop letting executives escape through the back door while their agencies are thrown under the bus.

If you brief it, own it. If you approve it, stand by it. If you kill it, don’t outsource the executioner.

Because marketing isn’t a magic trick. It’s an expression of vision. And when a rebrand collapses, it’s not the messenger who failed—it’s the strategist who didn’t know what they stood for.

Final Words:

If the story sucks, don’t shoot the storyteller.
Fire the author.

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