Weight loss drugs are about to shake-up marketing more than AI. "This is the Viagra effect on Steroids."

Cannes Lions Preview: What the industrial marketing complex will be talking about next week.

Photo by Valentin Kremer on Unsplash

If you think AI and the stunning shake-up in search are going to radically transform the marketing and media landscape this year, then wait until you see the effects of the booming weight-loss and diabetes drug sector on how the American consumer behaves. 

These topics will be front and center at the annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, which gets underway this weekend on the French Riviera. 

The pharma sector has injected a billion dollars of ad spending behind so-called GLP-1s, according to MediaRadar and demand is already outstripping supply. 

The category, led by Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wagovy brands, is already sparking new product launches outside of the pharma sector. Nestlé announced last month it has created Vital Pursuit, a high protein, small portion food line for use with such drugs. 

“Whether you are a company built around weight management and healthy lifestyles, whether you are a fitness brand, a health, snack food brand, this is a massive opportunity to position your product portfolio to be resonant,” said Brian Robinson, the global chief strategy officer at Havas Health Network.  “This is going to have such a profound impact on the culture.” 

The impacts are smaller portions, smaller clothing sizes, lower alcohol consumption to new airline weight calculations and perhaps more people coming to dating sites.  A slimmer, less hungry American consumer affects a surprising array of product lines and Wall Street is watching. The sector is expected to be worth $105 billion by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley. “This is the Viagra effect on steroids,” Robinson wrote in an OpEd for Campaign this week.  

Novo Nordisk’s svp, commercial strategy Tejal Vishalpura is in Cannes and we’ll be chatting in the Palais with Queen Latifah on Tuesday about changing the cultural conversation around obesity so that there's more understanding and sensitivity about the disease. 

AI: who survives.

Meanwhile, WPP is hosting Elon Musk for a conversation which could break news about his AI product destined to overhaul his social network X. Will he address the ad community in a more polite fashion than at his Q&A with Dealbook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in November when he accused advertisers of blackmail? Don’t bet on it.

“Figuring out how to value content, along with transparency about who is compensated and how, is where a lot of the discussions at Cannes are going to be centered this year,” says AI expert Greg Kahn, founder of GK Digital Ventures. “There’s a war shaping up between content producers and publishers and AI platforms. The divide is over who’s doing deals and who is holding off. Sometimes, there’s a divide within the companies themselves.” 

Forbes and the rest of the media business is trying to understand a best case scenario for partnering with AI firms but it’s been hard to see the silver lining so far. 

Google maybe losing its grip on search but it’s winning the streaming wars.

The erosion of Google’s dominance in search advertising and how that will upend the $300 billion dollar business, is a meaty topic for top ad guns over olive paste crackers and chilled glasses of champagne. Microsoft’s partner OpenAI, Meta and Perplexity are all eyeing share. Google’s place as the de facto gateway to the internet could be about to blow up and with it content companies relationship with traffic, and their whole financial support system.

Just as Google gets ready to pitch its wares from the Cannes Croisette, the company is taking more heat from Washington. This week a group of industry bodies wants the Justice Department to probe YouTube’s dominance in TV viewing thanks to its integration into ConnectedTV sets.  YouTube, which counts quarterly revenue of $8 billion, is the most watched US streaming service in the US, according to Nielsen. Read their angry letter here. 

Media companies are “in denial.”

Brian Wieser, a veteran business analyst who writes the financial newsletter Madison and Wall on Substack is in Cannes this week. He told me in a phone interview about the winners and losers of tomorrow.  “If you are pursuing the development of a global platform that is format agnostic then you have a good shot at growth, and if not, you don’t.” Wieser believes that advertisers don’t care that much about professional video-based content anymore, nor about journalism. 

“They can say they care but watch their wallets, it’s not where the money is going. It’s the platforms that are growing and that includes the retail media [stores that sell ads on their sites and apps.] It’s not just Google and Meta, it’s Amazon, TikTok and Microsoft, Pinterest and Snap and Reddit.” He thinks media companies are in denial about what’s going on. 

“There is willful optimism, meaning a hope for growth but unfounded by any evidence to support it. They are fighting to live another day.” Wieser heard from media companies’ top executives last year that the ad market was soft even though his numbers showed the broader ad market was healthy. “It was factually, completely bonkers wrong.”

Connecting creators.

Meanwhile organizers of Cannes Lions are recognizing that marketers want to tap into creators are growing social presence. Goldman Sachs estimates that spending in the creator economy sector could reach $480 billion by 2027. NBCUniversal signed “Call Her Daddy,” podcaster Alex Cooper to helm Olympics events on Peacock as a way to connect with younger viewers.

“The best companies are those that can connect through culture,” says Chris Vollmer, MediaLink managing director and partner at UTA which is bringing Emma Chamberlain and Robyn DelMonte to Cannes.  The conference will also celebrate Ynon Kreiz, the Mattel CEO, as entertainment person of the year thanks to its “Barbie” movie marketing success.

Cannes Lions used to see advertisers come to watch talks in the main conference center and hold a few business meetings and dinners; now each firm is hosting its own Cannes Lions mini-conference in an attempt to impress their clients.

Unfortunately, there’s a shortage of listeners as people try to cram an insane level of commitments on their calendars. I’m hearing about marketing and event teams that have been working this week until midnight. They’ll need to steal themselves for flights, jet lag and then four days of early breakfasts, lunches, coffees, cocktails, dinners and late night beach parties. (Good Luck getting any sleep.) Cue a thousand promotional sizzle reels - Cannes Lions is about to begin.

The Media Mix Cannes Lions coverage and our Sunday night dinner in Cannes is sponsored by Havas. Take a look at their research on consumer perspectives about Generative AI here.