This year Forbes named Cannes Lions the most important event in the creator economy. YouTube showed what that means in practice when a brand builds its entire festival programme around the creators themselves.
Over 200 creators and the first Creator Club
At the end of June, Forbes published an article headlined “How Cannes Lions Became The Creator Economy’s Most Important Event”. It describes the festival, which for decades belonged to advertising agencies and their clients, as a week when the world’s best creators meet in one place. According to the piece, more than 200 creators arrived at the official creator hub, and YouTube opened its own Creator Club for the first time, with breakfasts and lunches in a brand speed dating format.
YouTube paid for creators’ production support
Grace Andrews, a brand builder and creator economy expert whom YouTube invited as one of 13 creators, described what taking part looked like from the inside. According to her, YouTube covered a companion for each creator, a production partner who handled the content on site. “You simply can’t show up to something at that scale and turn content around alone,” Andrews explains. Production support reflects the fact that professional creators now work like small production teams.
Creator Club and a spot on the main stage
According to Andrews, creators also got space in the main programme. She describes the Creator Club as a floor with a daily programme, masterclasses on brand deals and wellness, and air conditioning when it was 36 degrees Celsius outside. Part of the cohort appeared on the main stage at Google Beach. “This was a brand that understood that if creators are going to be at the centre of the industry conversation, they need to actually be at the centre. Not photographed at it. In it,” writes Andrews.
Brand Deal Desk live on stage
On stage in front of senior marketers and brand leaders, creators presented the Brand Deal Desk format live for the first time, according to Andrews. At YouTube’s activations, it also previewed new features including YouTube Shopping, where creators could try the tool and book a one-to-one consultation with their YouTube manager. A separate activation was YouTube Drive-In, from which, according to Andrews, a participant took home a personalised video ready to share.
Tools for brands built on Gemini
YouTube played the other half of its bet, aimed at brands, as well. At the festival it introduced several tools built on Gemini, including the Content & Creator Insights API for planning campaigns with creators, and an expanded Insights Finder.
Participation ran through the whole festival. “The internet used to be about distribution. Increasingly, it’s about participation,” said Mike Minton, Chief Product Officer at Twitch, according to Forbes.
Andrews herself expects other brands to copy this approach next year, from inviting more creators and providing production support to a programme that replaces parties. “YouTube just set the benchmark and the gap between them and everyone else right now is significant,” she adds. Whether or not she is right, YouTube showed at Cannes a concrete version of a brand that counts on creators as equal partners.
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