Good Enough Isn't

Irreplaceably Human: What Cannes Lions 2026 Means for Creative, AI, and Marketing

• Myles Biggs

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 38:04

Send us Fan Mail

Featuring: Patrick Patterson (CEO, LE), Howard Diamond (CRO), and Pat Van Gorder (Chief Partnerships Officer) of Level Agency Host: Myles Biggs


Episode Summary

Level sent three leaders, CEO Patrick Patterson, CRO Howard Diamond, and Chief Partnerships Officer Pat Van Gorder, to Cannes Lions this year, and this episode is their debrief. Rather than a straight recap of the world's biggest creativity festival, the conversation centers on a question every marketing leader is quietly asking right now: as AI absorbs more of the work, what actually stays human, and what does that mean for how brands should be building their teams, their agency relationships, and their creative?

The panel keeps returning to one phrase: irreplaceably human. It surfaced constantly at Cannes this year as agencies, brands, and platforms all tried to name what AI genuinely cannot replicate: taste, judgment, curiosity, and one-to-one connection. The group unpacks the split they saw play out at the festival itself, a creative side focused on craft and human insight, and a media and technology side focused on scale and automation, and argues the two are only getting more valuable when they're built together rather than treated as separate disciplines.

From there the conversation turns practical. The panel discusses why creative is becoming the clearest competitive differentiator in a market where every brand has access to similar AI tooling, how client conversations about AI have shifted in six months from "are you using it" to "how are you proving ROI with it," and why award-winning creative work correlates with measurable business outcomes rather than existing as a vanity exercise. They also make the case for indie and scaled independent agencies having a real moment at Cannes this year, not just attending, but presenting, partnering, and winning.


What You'll Learn

  • Why "irreplaceably human" became the unofficial theme of Cannes Lions 2026, and how the panel defines what that actually means (taste, judgment, curiosity, and relationship, not just craft)
  • Why creative is becoming the differentiator that separates brands when everyone has access to the same AI and algorithmic tools
  • How client expectations around AI have matured in just six months, from proving you use it to proving it drives value and ROI
  • Why award-winning creative work correlates with real business impact, not just recognition, and what that means for how brands should evaluate creative investment
  • The rise of "brandformance," the blending of creativity, media, and performance into a single discipline instead of three separate ones
  • Why scaled independent agencies had a breakout year at Cannes, from panel stages to award shortlists, and what that signals for brands evaluating agency partners
  • A practical framework for evaluating new AI tools and models (their own internal evaluation process, covering discovery, testing, safety, and measurable outcomes)
  • Why the next frontier for brands isn't just AI content, but conversational and agent-facing brand experiences (business messaging agents across Google, Meta, and TikTok)
  • Why "permission" to put creative back at the center of strategy, not as an afterthought to lead volume and cost per lead, was a real takeaway for how the panel is changing their own approach


Featured Panelists

Patrick Patterson is CEO of Level Agency, where he leads the agency's overall strategy and its approach to applying AI across marketing operations and client work.

Howard Diamond is Chief Revenue Officer at Level Agency, leading the agency's sales and client growth strategy.

Pat Van Gorder is Chief Partnerships Officer at Level Agency, leading the agency's strategic partnerships across technology, media, and platform relationships.


Connect With Our Panelists


Connect With the Show


How to Support the Show

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to Good Enough Isn't wherever you get your podcasts, share it with a colleague who's thinking about creative and AI, and leave a rating and review. It helps more marketing leaders find the show


Myles Biggs

Welcome back to Good Enough Isn't. This is your host, Myles Biggs, and today we have a special Cannes Lions episode of the podcast for you. Every June, the global advertising industry descends on the south of France for Cannes Lions, the world's most prestigious creativity festival. Agencies, brand marketers, tech platforms all in one place for a week. If you are listening to this and you're not a creative, you might wonder what any of it has to do with you, and that's actually the question driving this whole episode. Level sent three people to walk the show this year: Patrick Patterson, our CEO; Howard Diamond, our CRO; and Pat Vangorder, our chief partnerships officer. Today's episode, they're all here on a panel diving into their biggest takeaways. So let's bring them out and get started. Gentlemen, nice to have you on the podcast today. Good

Patrick Van Gorder

morning. What's up? Thanks for having us. You've really been working on that radio voice. It's

Myles Biggs

strong. Thank you. To open up, I thought we could do, like, a quick lightning round question for each of you. I'd like you to each describe Cannes Lions for me in one word. So Patrick, why don't we start with you?

Patrick Patterson

I'll do the five. Hot.

Myles Biggs

Hot. Okay.

Patrick Patterson

It was extremely hot. It was 20 degrees warmer, uh, than typical uh, in, in for that time of year. And so, in a conference that's predominantly outside and all of the meetings are outside, it was hot. And so I'll, I'll let Howard and Pat give- more pithy answers, but that's my quick response. I know

Patrick Van Gorder

it.

Howard Diamond

So I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna use two wor- Yeah. I, I'm gonna use two words. I'm gonna say full circle, because this was my first time coming with Level, and I had been here previously, but I had met the Level folks about a year ago. So it was, like, a full circle moment for me, and really fun, really fortunate to be going again and with, with my colleagues here from Level.

Patrick Van Gorder

And I'll go with unique. I, I didn't know what to expect. This was my first time, Patrick's first time too, so, you know, it was-- there was a little bit of, um, what is this whole thing that everyone is talking about? And, WTF is the, is gonna be the value for us? And I was blown away, pleasantly surprised by sort of the serendipity and uniqueness of the whole affair, which I'm excited to unpack together today. Yeah.

Howard Diamond

Yeah. You can try to explain, you know, what Cannes is all about, but until you're actually there and experience it it, it's a completely different thing. I

Myles Biggs

feel like hot, full circle, unique is gonna be a great a great name for this podcast when it, when this finally airs. Uh, but so Pat, back to what you just said, you know, the, like, what is the value in all of this? Having gone now, what was the value in all of it? Now that you're back, what's the key learnings?

Patrick Van Gorder

Patrick, so something you said I think was really interesting. We, we, you know, we were, we were kinda playing around with this idea over the course of the week, trying to figure out where the, where the magic was. I think first, like, a lot of-- I won't say everyone is there, that sounds obnoxious. Um, but, like, a lot of people were there, and a lot of very, very smart people that were, very interesting and engaged and leaned in. Patrick, you mentioned the time difference thing, so, like, the fact that we were all, five to eight hours ahead of our teams back stateside meant that there was less sort of a distraction. I don't know about you guys, but, like, when I'm at conferences, like, my... the work does not stop, and I know, you know, Howard was taking pitches from the, from the Croisset. Um, but you know, it was just, it was kind of a, like a s- a sacred space some, in some ways, kinda carved out. You know, people weren't on their phones in the same ways. Yeah, so those were two, two factors. What do you guys, what do you guys think?

Howard Diamond

I agree that the, um, the fact that it's at that time allows you to be really focused. At the same time, no one feels sorry for you that you're also then getting on calls at midnight or 1:00 in the morning to talk to your team, because the rosé and the fun meals and all that are supposed to make up for that. But I think it is unique, and it allows you to kinda live in that dual world of, you know, relationships and thought leadership and having fun, and then also checking in on the real world.

Patrick Patterson

Yeah. And, and Myles, I think, you know, as, as I think I've said on the podcast before, like, in 2026, trying to figure out what is irreplaceably human in what we're doing, and, you know, in the past six years, going from 100% Zoom to now AI and everything getting replaced in what we're doing and automated, I think, like, what was really unique was, like, Can- Canline by itself is irreplaceably human. It is about the human and everything, and yes, we talked about AI, and yes, we talked about advertising, and yes, we're gonna... we talked about all those things. But, like, the human aspect, the touch the being able to touch f- touch the table with folks and have those relationships and those conversations in a way that, yes it, you know, because our teams are six hours behind or, you know, it's different. But, it i- it, it really kind of underscored to me the importance of one-to-one connection, in person, and we all know it's important, but I think the week really showed, showcased to me, like, how important it is.

Myles Biggs

Yeah, no, that phrase, irreplaceably human, is something we're... It keeps coming up in all of our conversations at Level. Did you feel like that was a shared thought by other attendees? Or when you were interacting with other leaders across companies, folks had a different opinion, and you found yourself in some friendly debates?

Patrick Patterson

Yeah, I think, I think we're all trying to figure it out. I would say some of the best conversations I had during the week were debating what is irreplaceably human. Is it taste? Is it judgment? Is it curiosity? Is it relationship? Is it connection? You know, there was, there was one agency leader I was, I was arguing with that said, you know, "Judgment is not irreplaceably human," that we can have, uh, machines do the judgment for us. We can have machines, uh, mimic taste for us. And so I think we're all, as, business folks, advertisers, creatives, we're all trying to figure out where do we fit as we hold our breath on, on what's gonna get automated next. And, I think everyone has a little bit of a different answer, and I also think that answer to that question is gonna be what separates your company from other companies as we go forward and we all get better and better technology underneath what we do.

Patrick Van Gorder

Yeah, I think the-

Howard Diamond

I-

Patrick Van Gorder

Oh, go ahead, Howard.

Howard Diamond

Well, I was gonna say, I think, um, taking it in a little bit of a different direction, this also gets into the dichotomy of Cannes itself. That Cannes, again, is this sort of creative festival where you have the Palais, which is where they house the creative awards and all the great work, and you have creatives literally on panels talking about the work they did with their hands in conference rooms. It doesn't mean they didn't use technology or data, but it's a very different sort of creator mentality. Then you go out to the beach, and it's all the media companies talking about technology and AI and things like that. So when you talk about irreplaceably human there is this, uh, dichotomy that's happening, but at the end, they should really be connected together. So I just think it's, uh, it's a really strong observation in a year where, you know, agentic is, is the number one buzzword, but at the end of the day, creative and media really need to sit together

Patrick Van Gorder

I think these are still people that are, thinking about what their place in this future is, right? And I think that's why I love the enunciation of irreplaceably human. I think it's, I think it is a great, essential view of the anxiety that people are feeling because I think they're trying to, you know, they're trying to put a finger on it and ask, "Do I have it? Do I, you know, do I have that, that, that capability that is irreplaceably human?" And I do think that, you know, there's, there's a very legitimate sort of span of argument about what that entails. But I think, you know, the, the being in sort of the room where that conversation is happening in real time and where, you know, if you think about a lot of the, the frontier, like actual consumer applications of AI, you know, it is in the marketing, in consumer, you know, experience space, and it's really interesting and edifying to be sort of on the, in the room where those conversations are happening.

Myles Biggs

Was there ever one of those conversations that you're talking about, Pat, where you left it going "I know I'm eight hours ahead, but like our team has to hear this right now or our clients need to hear about this. Like this is, this is something that really resonated"?

Patrick Van Gorder

I think we were all taking a fairly journalistic approach. Our nerd-in-chief, Patrick, of course, sp- spun up a, uh, spun up like a, an agentic hub that was basically, you know, taking all of our our notes and transcripts in and ingesting it. Um, so we were all kinda taking a very journalistic approach and then sharing out with our team as we were- teams as we were talking about stuff. Um, I think, you know, some of the interesting things that feel like they are still sorta unsettled territory you know, we heard a variety of opinions from different, um, ad platforms around, like, AI-generated influencer sort of dynamics. So, you know, I think you've got one camp that's saying, "Hey, like, uh, we- we're gonna draw the line at you know, AI-generated humans at, you know, in a, a consumer context." Then you've got other folks that are like, "No, it's just a matter of time until you know, there is effective AI-generated, influencers, and you see some of this already, right? Yeah. This is not novel, but, like, thinking about that at scale in, in a brand sponsor context. But those types of things I think are the interesting, like, um, unsettled territories right now one example of that.

Patrick Patterson

Yeah. I don't know about you and, uh, you, Pat and Howard. I miss Cannes Bot. You know- All right. Yeah. we, we had C- we had Cannes Bot that was messaging us during the day, telling us where we needed to be. We could send it notes. It would parse everything. That was fun. You know, I think, Howard, uh, you know, we talked about this a little bit, but, like, the, uh, this idea that AI was going to be the phrase of Cannes, right? And, like, this thing that everyone's gonna be talking about at AI, AI, and of c- and of course we talked about AI. But I think, like, what was really fascinating, I, and I believe I made three or four phone calls after, you know, I was in a, a meeting with one of our partners about this. You know, sitting in a room with some of the, some of not some of the top agencies in the world, and, the question comes up of, "How are your clients expecting you to use AI?" And the answer was, "Well, six months ago we had to explain it, and now it's just expected." And there's this idea that this has shifted very quickly, and, like, six months is a fast time for something to shift. Uh, you know, and so, like, I would say back in January, and Howard you're on the front lines in this, in, in, in what you do, but, like, clients were asking, like, "How are you using it? What are you doing? What are the tools? Where are all the things?" And now today it's, "How do you generate value? How are you getting results? How are you getting ROI?" Not that they didn't care about that, but I think there was more pressure to figure it out six months ago, and now it's like electricity, the internet, and air. Yes, we're going to use AI just like we use all those other things to create great work, but now how do you get results, right? Yeah. And I think that was a very interesting paradigm shift for me.

Howard Diamond

Yeah, I think it's expected. I mean, the, the, the maturity is happening where, again, it comes back to what value is this adding to the relationship, to the campaign? How is it affecting the end customer? So I think that evolution has happened very quickly, I agree.

Patrick Van Gorder

I think that showed up in the work that, that won awards too. A couple of the, the standout pieces that, that I saw were not about AI or, you know, even like highly visible AI for the sake of it. It was about what the, you know, what the capabilities power. There was an awesome, uh, lucky fan index project I think BML did for a, a Polish league football club where they basically, you know, brute force ML like, uh, in this league, everyone has to... They have a record of who's at every game, so they could tell who the luckiest fan was- Oh, that's fun who, you know, whose attendance was most correlated with, the best outcomes and who was the unluckiest fan. That obviously you know, more of an ML technique, but then they were able to sort of personalize the outreach to each individual fan based on their lucky fan index. But it wasn't about, you know, the fact that, "Oh, we're, we're using AI to do this." It's we're having a really, one-to-one conversation based on this, you know, sense of belonging that, you know, that, that I think was what, what tilted the judges on it

Howard Diamond

To, to take it in a slightly different direction, so Level actually submitted work this year, and it was our first time, and it was amazing work. And we weren't shortlisted, which is okay. And it's funny because the company of, of brands that we were not shortlisted in is a, is an amazing list of companies. I mean, just awesome global brands. And one of the things that I was sort of set up, set out to do was to understand for our team what it takes to win a Cannes Lion and do some research, and I sat in, on some panels. And one of the panels I went to, they talked about, like, what actually is required to deliver winning work to win at Cannes. And one of the judges started talking about, "We'll start with reverse engineering the criteria for the award." And I immediately started thinking of AI. Okay, we can build an analysis tool, and we can sort of reverse engineer, you know, what, what that path looks like. Of course, um, doesn't mean it doesn't take human taste and judgment to get there, but you can definitely apply a technology lens. And then another judge interrupted and said, "No, no, no. It's all about the customer. It's all about what's on the other end of the ad." I think that even that struggle on stage kind of represents, you know, what's, what's happening in the marketplace. Surely you can immediately graft on a technology and AI approach, but at the end of the day, you need to be thinking about the human on the other end of the ad and what impact that's gonna have. So I thought that was very interesting and kind of, again, um, apropos for what was going on between this giant creative festival right next to this giant technology media festival, where some of the people didn't know they were both happening next to each other.

Patrick Patterson

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I was talking to someone who, had, has been to Cannes for the past 15 years. And 15 years ago, Howard, it was purely a creative festival, right? There, there wasn't two parties, uh, you know, working, you know, working in parallel. So, and then the past six years, seven years, it's really been taken over by the media companies. You've seen the companies like Google and Spotify and Meta come in, um, with the Snapchat museum now, uh, which is, which is crazy. And I think, you know, as I was talking to this, this person, they were like, "You know, this is the first year in many years where it's started to come back as a creative conference." And it, and 'cause creative, I think, is now more important than ever when it comes to media, right? So it's this, you know, I, I know Google was talking about brandformance, but it's this combination of creativity and media and performance all coming into, to one spot. So I think as you think about advertising agencies and you think about where we fit in the confluence of those three things and technology. There was ad tech was there, OpenAI and Claude were there. We're kind of in the middle of all of those things as an agency. Like, how important do you think it is, and I'm just curious, like, for agencies like us to submit work to Cannes and to really be a part of that creative story and not just the media story?

Howard Diamond

I think I, I wanna focus first on this notion of the importance of creative. I think in a world where everyone has access to different types of agentic tools, you know, value-based bidding, different types of algorithmic, uh, buying strategies, if everyone is using similar technology, then what becomes that lever that is different across brands that are perhaps competitors? And that is where creative comes in. So I think creative is super important, and you can arrive, you can arrive at creative decisions through technology and data insights, but having the ability to actually produce great creative that resonates with humans emotionally is really important. I think to the extent that awards are important, I think there are different opinions there. I definitely think it's really cool for agencies to submit work because it shows how awesome their teams are, how just the amazing work that they're doing, whether they win or lose, it sort of creates attention and awareness of this great work that they're doing. Also, I think it's a great moment for the brands, the customers themselves. It's really about them, that they have partnered together with us. They've given us the flexibility, the liberty, uh, the freedom. They're taking risks. I think that's another big part of creative is taking risks to do great work. So I think that to the extent that we're illuminating those stories, it's really important. I think at the end of the day, if you look at who actually wins awards, and Pat and I were chatting about this, it's a lot of very large global agencies and global brands. And- Today I don't know- Today is Today. Right? Yeah.

Patrick Patterson

And I think, I think that distinction, so, like, it is large global holdco agencies and, and I think, hot take here, Myles, I think we're gonna see more and more indies smaller, nimbler, agencies that are coming into this moment and now have access to these demo- democratized tools and democratized data. And, you know, it used to be, and I'll just say it out loud, right? Holdcos used to hold all of the keys to the best media buys and the best technology and the best everything because they had all the money. And so when you have the best of everything, the technology, the information, the best of everything, it's easy to command to- and work with the best brands. I think what we're seeing now and why a lot of holdcos are, are scared is, smaller organizations that are 200, 500, even 1,000 employees kinda in that, in that size range now have access to the same buying power, the same tech- the same technology, the same information. And I think while maybe it was 95% large agencies today, I think as we go forward, we're gonna see more and more indies, indies coming in and really disrupting what- Yeah what's happening here. I know, Pat, you have a strong take on that.

Patrick Van Gorder

I do, and I, and I wanna... Let me come back to the indie thing in a second 'cause I think on the earlier question around do these awards matter one of the most interesting things I heard, and I, I don't have the data to actually check this, but it was you know, somebody very smart and compelling sharing it was that they did a, you know, they did a a correlative association study and they, you know, they, they looked at, like, what campaigns won awards and correlated it with business impact and, like, real business impact as much as it was measurable, and they found, a very, very close you know, connection between award-winning work and actually driving businesses forward. So I thought that was interesting and, you know, remembering that it's not, like, great work is not worth celebrating on its, by itself. It's the fact that great work drives great business outcomes, and that whole picture is, you know, is what I think, you know, Cannes Lions is, is trying to celebrate. So I think that's why, you know, this is a good aspirational space for for brands and, and indies. And I do think, like, the in- the brands and agencies, and I think the, you know, the intentionality of, insight action result and, you know, really approaching it, you know, not just around like, "Hey, we're, you know, we're gonna do good marketing," right? "We're gonna do good foundational, fundamental performance or digital marketing." But no, we're gonna look at, we're gonna look at this problem, we're gonna look at this growth, this brand's growth objective and identify, you know, something new that somebody else hasn't seen before or seen as clearly, and then we're going to, build a wedge around that insight and, you know, deploy it in a way that, that drives outsized business growth and value. Like that to me is, is the magic of this type of, awards show. I think on the indie side Patrick, yeah, it was-- I mean, it was awesome to see the range of, scaled indie agencies that were there. Like there were, there were a lot of us, um, that were, you know, there's probably what, you know, 10 or 15 sort of that are in this, um, this power indie or scaling indie category that, you know, that we're, you know, proud to be on the vanguard of, and seems like all of them were there. You know, I won't, I won't shout out all the all the names because we're, we are frenemies after all. Um, but it's definitely, you know, it is definitely neat to you know, sort of see the investment and the understanding that like both from the indies up, like the indies saying, "Hey, there's value here for me to be here and be part of this conversation." And then, you know, from the brands and the tech and media platforms down saying the indies are able to do something here that, the holdcos can't do. They're able to move really fast. They're able to, to take insight and apply it and scale it across, you know, their portfolio really quickly. I think that is leading to us being on the vanguard of a lot of really exciting conversations.

Howard Diamond

Yeah, I agree. I think this was the year of the indie agency, not just sort of showing up, uh, as attendees and people that are sitting in the audience, but being on stage. A huge moment of pride was seeing you, Pat, on the, uh, the panel with PubMatic, and not only that we were sort of the first, uh, indie agency using their agenda capabilities, but it was all about the actual outcomes, if I could plug the work we're doing. And I think that's very representative of what's happening right now, that the holdcos, to Patrick's point, they don't have the market cornered on some of these capabilities. And with a lot of the new technology solutions out there, and I think I went in with a much more open mind this year talking to a lot of these vendors, that both with the agenda capabilities a lot of agencies are building and some of the tools that are out there in the marketplace, we could put together some really innovative solutions for clients and do it in a much more nimble and, you know, and s- fast way to bring those to market. So I, I was very excited about that whole aspect. It wasn't like we're sort of peering in from the outside. We're squarely part of the conversation this year, and that was really cool.

Patrick Patterson

Yeah, and, like, to your point on, on frenemies, Pat some of the best conversations I think I had all, all week were with what w- most would consider competitors.

Patrick Van Gorder

Yep.

Patrick Patterson

And, you know, I h- w- talking to the CEO of an organization, you know, we w- you know, one, one, literally in one breath it was, "Hey, uh, you guys took this account from us." I w- and, and in the other breath it was like, "Yeah, we-- and, and you took this account from us," and, you know, like, and, like, and it was, like, camaraderie and not competitive. And and then it was like, okay, well, there's, there's a lot we can learn from each other, I think, and a lot we can do together. And I think, the collective of us is also really, really powerful, right? Um, when-- that's the other thing. When you have 10,000 people at a holdco or 20,000 people or 30,000 people, you get that collective. And so I think, you know, the times where there were 10 indie agencies in a closed, you know, in a closed panel talking those were some of the most valuable conversations, 'cause it's-- we realize, like, if we can share our best practices, we all become better, and I think that's really exciting.

Myles Biggs

So for non-agency marketers listening, right? If I'm a marketing leader in an organization, if they could have sat in on that conversation that you're talking about, the indie agencies and what we're all doing, what should they be taking away? What should they be changing and doing differently in this coming quarter?

Patrick Van Gorder

I'll hop off on this, um, Myles. I think the speed and the pace of play is the biggest thing right now, and it's less about being 100% right and 100% certain, and it's more about being willing to lean into this incredibly disrupted moment where everything is changing and everything is changing. You know, Patterson's six-month, um, window, like six month is like a lifetime now, whereas that used to be what, you know, two QBRs. Still two QBRs. But the pace of travel is just so, accelerated and I think, um, you know, the best advice that I would give to, you know, a brand side marketer is, um, just like avoidance is not a strategy, like standing still is not a strategy. If you aren't moving you're going to, you're gonna sink really fast

Howard Diamond

And I would chime in. I think this notion that the mandate is still clear that we're here as agency partners to our brands to drive performance. So I think that if they could see us in the room having those conversations, it's really about that. But there's this bias towards action. I l- I love what Pat just said, that, you know, we need to take risks and lean in. And, you know, when you asked earlier about were there moments you wanted to call the team and talk about this or that, there were. There were technology solutions where I sat down perhaps, saying, "I'm not gonna like what I'm about to hear," or, "I, I already know everything about this thing." I'm like, "No, this was really interesting, and it's also very accessible, either the way that it was priced or the way we can kind of graft it onto our technology stack." So I would say we're in the room advocating for them. They also need to sort of own their part, which is allow for some of that flexibility to try new things and, um, and again, that bias towards action. Let's try new things. Let's see what happens. And that's the world we're in. It's not these big sort of monolithic technology initiatives. These-- the cycle has been compressed a lot.

Myles Biggs

Staying with the, the brand side marketers, you know, if they're talking to agencies, we'd said before that it's like, yes, we use electricity and we use AI. It's 2026, right? That's the given. So what should they be asking then? If the question's not, are you using AI, what questions should they be talking to their agencies about right now?

Howard Diamond

I mean, for me and maybe this sounds a little bit sort of old school, but it goes back to, how are we thinking about growing our business? How are we thinking about engaging customers? Like, it goes back to the AI tool should help drive a strong business and a strong brand, and that's the, that's sort of the, um, the end in mind that we should be thinking about, putting the customer first. I actually went to some sessions where I think it was The Female Quotient, they always run great content. They had a few different retailers and grocery brands up there, and all of the conversation was about the behavior of the end customer. How are customers behaving differently? How are they using technology differently? This is a fun example. I think I put this in my blog, but it's you know, no one searches for banana. They're searching for, "I need to figure out which type of banana is best for this banana bread." And whoever answers that question best is gonna sort of get, get the attention there. So I think understanding, using technology to understand consumer behavior and how to create a stronger connection with the brand should be the conversation that, that brands are having.

Patrick Van Gorder

Yeah, it was, it was fun to be there. Incidentally, uh, the new Siri was released to like, you know, the, the elite vanguard of users. So Patterson, of course, got new Siri access while we were in France. And I got to watch him basically interrogate the capabilities of Siri, you know, as an expert in a... Um, my, my phone just turned on. It's like, "Hey, are you talking about me?" Um, but as an expert in a, you know, in a very structured way. And I, you know, I wonder if if you have some similar examples, Patrick, of what you would ask. You know, just like you asked, you know, someone that is, um, like a casual user will go and ask a third party, "Hey, is the new Siri good?" You know, Patterson had sort of a series of questions that allowed him to evaluate different capability sets for himself. I wonder if you have some similar types of questions that, you know, that you would ask an agency that was sort of presenting themselves- Yeah as being on the, you know, on the vanguard here.

Patrick Patterson

Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a really interesting question. I think, we go back to i- like innovation's still gonna be important, right? Discovery is still important. Curiosity is still important. So all of these things are reasons you-- one of the reasons you hire an agency. We have tested 100 different creative tools, some with AI, some without AI. We have implemented dozens of different attribution models and m- media mix models and, and tested off the shelf versus build our own and have a data science team. You know, we have, done the John Henry test against p- PMax versus a, you know, n- a manual bidding and all that fun stuff. We've done all of this, right? We... 'Cause we, we can do that over and over and over again. And I think, so I think, one of the things that we're doing now at the, at the pace of change, was literally just having a conversation about this yesterday we, we have started to build these evaluation processes inside of our of our organization. So it's this, standard list of questions that we ask and an expected kind of outcome, and these evals tell us is the new model. So Fable 5, you know, depending on when this gets released, but like Fable 5 got re-released this week. Excellent. So now, now you know when, when we recorded this podcast. But like, is it better? Is it, uh, is it better than Opus 4.8? Uh, is it better than f- uh, GPT 5.5 or the upcoming GPT 5.6? And why is it better? Is it cheaper? Is it more expensive? And so, is it better at doing certain things? And so, like, the way you evaluate, I think technology should be similar to the way you evaluate an agency. You should be asking these questions. How are you discovering new technology? How are you testing it? How are you determining, uh, safety and privacy and, all of these things, and what's your process for that? I think understanding the way that these things get implemented inside an organization is important versus, how did you wrap ChatGPT in a, in a copy, you know, BS app and called it AI, right? That's just not how the future of work is gonna be done. So I think really understanding from your agency "Hey, what, what's your system for evaluating the new technology when it comes out?" And if you don't have a good answer to that in 20- July 1st, 2026, uh, you're, uh, you're gonna have a problem, I think the, the, the- Yeah you know, the rest of the year and, and next year for sure.

Patrick Van Gorder

You know, asking-- So thinking about the cus- how consumer behavior is changing and asking questions of, you know, the agency around how they're you know, how they're leaned in on, you know, the ad products that are, you know, that are leaning in on that consumer behavior. Obviously that's things like AI Max with Google, but, you know, it's also, you know, there's-- I think we're entering a new and exciting age. A lot of people at Cannes were talking about, business messaging agents, right? Google has a product, Meta has a product TikTok is, you know, is launching a similar product. You know, the, the era of, you know, conversational brands I think is, a very interesting interesting one. And, you know, the agencies that are leaning in on testing experiences in those on those types of surfaces I think will be ahead. And then, you know, you think about, like, business, you know, B2 agent type modalities. Like, how are you thinking about positioning your brand in a way that's positioned to be, engaged with, understood by, a individual's agent or set of agents is, I think, a really exciting and interesting new frontier. So I think these things are the, you know, the, they were, they came up frequently, but in, you know, very sort of preliminary ways. I think there's still a lot of white space to, you know, to carve out a real leadership in those areas.

Myles Biggs

Patrick, you mentioned hot take earlier. I'm curious each of you, if you have a hot take. We were there at Cannes this year. Let's say you go back next year, assuming it sounds like you loved it, you're gonna go back. What do you think's true at next year's Cannes that wasn't true this year?

Patrick Patterson

It was very hot. It was exhausting. I think, you know, most of the days I was ready for bed at 8:30 PM, uh, after a day of, a full day of meetings. I mentioned, indie, indie agencies independently owned agencies, um, having more of a moment, and I think you're gonna see more and more of that over the next two years is my hot take. But I, I also mentioned here I think we're going to continue, which is just so counterintuitive probably to everything that everyone has heard me say about AI for the past five years as I've done keynotes on AI. I think we're gonna continue to lean in on this concept of irreplaceably human. I think creative's gonna be more important going into next year, and I think, you know, in general, you're gonna see a lot more technology-enabled agencies leaning heavier into the human side of creative as their differentiator over the next year.

Howard Diamond

Um, very excited to go back next year. I think one of the things we're talking about is how do we expose more of the agency to the Cannes experience, and what does that look like? So I think that's really important, whether it's on the creative side, on the technology side. So I, I do think that you'll have a lot of the same. You'll have a lot of really great, innovative solutions. I think, again, the, uh, the bias will be towards how are these solutions really driving value for brands. So yeah. I'm excited to hopefully go back next year and have some more of my colleagues there along with me learning and questioning and experiencing what I think is a great, a great event put on every year. What

Myles Biggs

about you, Pat? Any hot takes?

Patrick Van Gorder

Um, I'm gonna lean in on this indie moment thing because I think we're just, you know, we're entering-- Like, I can hear the civ- the civilization golden music, golden age music playing, uh, "Ode to Joy" in the background. I think we're entering, you know, that, that real golden age of, like, the scaled indies. So I think that, you know, in a call your shot sort of way, I think we're gonna see more indies winning more gold, uh, and Grand Prix awards in, you know, in the Palais in addition to, you know, just being there and, you know, hoping to be amongst that, uh, uh, you know, a, a, a driver of that trend ourselves. But I think just the, you know, the general vibe, I think is gonna continue to shift in that direction. And more, um, I think more agency partner collaborations. There was a, you know, there was a, or ag- agency media and technology partner collaborations. There was a some winning work, I can't remember, uh, what the agency was, but it was in, in partnership with Reddit on the, the I think it was the Dove True Beauty campaign. Like it was the Real Reviews campaign. And it was, you know, the brand, the agency, but Reddit was, you know, explicitly mentioned and sort of collaborated with from the beginning, and it was about sort of, you know, the ver- the authenticity of real reviews making, you know, positive reviews sound better. But I think more of that type of work where it's not just brand, agency, and then, partner activation channels are incidental, but, like, sort of natively, endemically built into the strategy I think is gonna be a really exciting thing.

Myles Biggs

So we started this with one word from each of you. Uh, similarly, I'd love to end it with one thing. So curious for each of you, what's one thing that you're changing in your thinking or your approach because of what you experienced at this year's Cannes Lions? Pat, you wanna keep going since you ended out hot takes?

Patrick Van Gorder

Sure. So I've been having a lot of fun going through the submissions from the, the awards. And I, I built a a redux of our, like, case study creation tool that sort of built around what were the commonalities of the, the winning work at Cannes. Um, so, thinking about how to really bring forward... Our team has these incredible insights that drive incredible decisions every single day and it's so fun to shine a spotlight on those things, but it can get, you know, we're, we're doing so much so frequently, so fast that it, that those individual, like, insight, data-driven insights that drive great work can be missed. Um, you know, creating a set of tools to make those insights shine a brighter spotlight on those insights is something that I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be continuing to work on.

Myles Biggs

Go ahead.

Howard Diamond

I'm gonna go in a slightly different direction. I'm gonna use the word permission, and I mean that in a way that my team talks a lot to new potential cu- customers and, and existing customers and clients. And permission meaning to really put creative in the forefront and make sure that as performance marketers, we're not just thinking about number of leads and cost per lead and things like that. We really are bringing creative back into the forefront and making sure that it's really connected to our strategy. I think that that's something that I'm taking away, is that it's not an afterthought. It's not something that we revisit from time to time. It's really important that these things have to sit together

Patrick Patterson

Yeah. And, last week really reinforced a c- a concept I've actually been kicking around for a month and a half, and maybe, maybe I'll, I'll write a post about it. But connection relationships are opt-in. You know, I think a lot of times it's easy to sit behind a Slack an iMessage, an email, and wait for people to email you or, uh, reach out to you, and you can respond. And I think what I really took away from last week is, you have to opt in to the conversation. You have to opt in to wanting to be there, to be in the room, to put yourself out there to ask. A lot of times we end an email with, "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help," versus, really that, that's very passive. And I think being more assertive, uh, it was really showcased last week for me. Like, the moments where I was like, "Hey, Myles, how can I do this for you?" Or, you know, and having a real conversation, those were the, the most meaningful connections and the most meaningful moments in that in-person time. And I think so opting into that in-person time and opting into those relationships is one of my huge takeaways.

Myles Biggs

All right, everyone, that's a wrap for this episode of Good Enough, Isn't thank you to our panelists for sharing their thoughts and experiences, and thanks to all of you for listening. For more conversations like this one, be sure to subscribe to Good Enough, Isn't wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time.