Sir Martin Sorrell believes the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is asking the wrong questions.

The executive chairperson of S4 Capital argued that while the festival centred on AI and its impact on human creativity, the real issue confronting the advertising industry is media.

Speaking with Manifest, on the sidelines of the festival, Sorrell said, "Last year, Cannes focused on AI's impact. This year, it focused on AI's impact on human creativity, which I believe is in decent shape in the short to medium term."

Pointing to the massive investments being made by Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon, Sorrell argued that agencies are increasingly competing against businesses with greater financial firepower.

"Media should be at the centre of all conversations. Cannes is misdirected, and so is the industry's attention," he said.

He also dismissed suggestions that the 25% decline in Cannes Lions entries reflected a weakening creative industry. Instead, he attributed the drop to stricter entry requirements and tougher scrutiny following last year's controversies surrounding manipulated case studies and AI-generated results.

However, Sorrell questioned whether the festival itself is losing some of its creative relevance. He noted that many brand activations conclude before the final day, leaving the winners of the Film Lions, traditionally one of the festival's biggest attractions, to be announced when much of the industry has already departed.

Beyond Cannes, Sorrell offered a blunt assessment of the global agency landscape.

While Publicis Groupe continues to outperform most of its peers, he believes maintaining that momentum will become difficult.

"There's more pressure on Arthur Sadoun than there is on Cindy Rose," he said, referring to the CEOs of Publicis Groupe and WPP respectively. "Arthur has the best strategy around data and digital, but the law of large companies catches  up with everyone eventually."

His harshest criticism, however, was reserved for WPP.

Calling the group's current structure 'a terrible, terrible mess', Sorrell questioned why WPP continues to promote its agency brands individually despite positioning itself as 'One WPP'.

"If WPP genuinely wants to create One WPP, Cannes is the perfect showcase," he said. "Instead, you see WPP Creative, WPP Media, VML, Ogilvy and Grey all presented separately. This is carnage."

On the Omnicom-IPG merger, Sorrell said it will take at least two years before the industry can judge whether the deal was worthwhile, while criticising the way layoffs were reportedly handled.

Read the full interview with Sir Martin Sorrell in the July issue of Manifest, which can be bought here.