Rajdeepak Das, CCO, Publicis Groupe South Asia; Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer, Canva; and Laura Jordan Bambach, founder and CCO, Uncharted, discussed the flavours of the season at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – creativity and AI and its intersection. 

The talk was moderated by Chloe Markowicz, editor, Contagious.

Das kicked off the session by stating how his and Leo Burnett’s mission in India is to impact a billion loves.

“About 17-18 years ago I was watching the Shah Rukh Khan starrer – Swades. He came back to India and solved an issue about electricity. I was working abroad myself. I came back to India to impact a billion lives,” he said.

He went on to talk about recent campaigns he worked on which have looked to do that.

“Whether it’s a 1983 World Cup match being played back (for Airtel), something for water sustainability, farming (Lay’s), melting a ship (Bajaj), books about period hygiene (Whisper), designing the Indian cricket team jersey (MPL), we have been doing just that. But we are still just scratching the surface,” he added.

“I wake up every morning with a dream and that’s to impact lives. I’ve been doing this for the last two decades,” said Das.

Bambach added that her mission is to create more optimism and less optimisation. 

“I’m super interested in what’s happening in the world. The new technology around gives me the same feeling as when the internet first launched which blew my mind. Uncharted is a 10-week-old agency and our motto is ‘set out without fear’. That’s because there is fear and shame in agencies and marketers. We have done this to ourselves. It’s easy to sit back and look at the numbers. We want to make a case for more optimism in this industry and we need to make sure diverse voices are heard,” he added.

Adams spoke about AI and the concerns around it.

“AI will usher in a new golden age of creativity. Yes, there is a lot of worry and existential angst around it right now. However, creativity is always evolving,” he added.

Benjamin Disraeli stated, ‘The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing’. Now, that’s been adapted to ‘the greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of AI’.

He hinted that changes have always been met with concern.
“AI is a democratising tool. Anytime you put a tool like this in front of people, it empowers people. If you remove gatekeepers, creativity flourishes,” he said.

Bambach added her views on the subject.

“The biggest challenge is you need to throw yourself into it (AI) to play to understand it and get the most out of it. People have jobs that have become more hectic than they were before covid. Creatives need to explore AI instead of getting into a loop of everything feeling, looking and sounding the same,” she said.

Das added, “AI has existed for a while. Now, people are talking about it. It’s like ‘screen time’ being looked at negatively because of the mobile phone. Before phones, people were on the television screens, but no one used the phrase. Technology always helps things do better. It helps you eliminate what you don’t want to do. The biggest weapon a creative has is imagination.” 

Adams added that change must be embraced.

“If you look at the future. Whether it’s five or 20 years later, no want wants to do the same thing they are doing right now. So, if you have to change things – why not do it today,” he asked.

Recently a tweet about AI and its use went viral.

You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction.
I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

— Joanna Maciejewska—Snakebitten is on preorder now! (@AuthorJMac) March 29, 2024

Markowicz asked the panellists for their views on this and what they wanted from AI.

Das said, “I don’t think I want AI to do only laundry and dishes. I want it to drive cars, open the doors etc. Importantly I want them to work with the creative as a tool to make things better. It’s part of our life and you can’t remove it. You have to coexist and build on it.”

Bambach stated that she wanted creatives to stop fearing it.

“The fear is the real problem. When I was 16, I was interning in Sydney as a designer. There were no computers then. Then suddenly came the computers and we had to understand and work those tools on it,” she said.

Responding to a question about what he wants from creatives, Das stated the importance of hunger.

“I have worked for more than two decades across eight different countries. One thing that helps one survive is hunger. When someone’s hungry they will figure things out. You can teach skills but you can’t teach people hunger. The world’s best leaders are coming from small villages – because they need to be out there and make things happen. If we are not seeing enough of it now, we will see it happen in five years,” he said.

He added the importance of going out on the field to see the real world. 

“One of the biggest things we do is that we don’t sit in that conference room. We are on the ground. When we worked on Whisper, we had 1,000 hours of data as well. For Lay’s too, we’re working with farmers for potatoes. We have to be on the ground. The solution can only come if you’re out there on the field. You have to feel it, imagine it and then do it,” he said. 

Coming back to AI, he had one more story.

“We don’t have a ping pong table in office but we have AI to play with. We use it as a plugin tool for many things. While it helps eliminate mistakes, we use it to have fun and get stupid answers from it, which entertains us all in office,” he said.

The panel ended with the moderator asking each of them one crucial factor for success.

Adams said: It has to be breadth and experience. One shouldtry out as much as you can. Learn from art, science and humanity.

Bambach said: Curiousity in play. Play and experience everything.

Das said: Fuck up as much as you want to. Eventually, you will find a way out! Do it as many times as possible. Fail fast.