Cannes Lions has spent decades defining what great creativity looks like. Effie has done the same for effectiveness.
Paul Kemp-Robertson sits inside both.
As Chief Content Officer of LIONS, Paul has a rare vantage point on the forces shaping the global advertising industry. LIONS brings together Cannes Lions, Effie, WARC and Contagious — institutions that influence what gets celebrated, what gets studied, what gets put on stage and, ultimately, what the industry believes great work looks like.
Paul has also watched the industry change from almost every angle. He started at Shots in the early 1990s, when the world’s best advertising arrived on VHS tapes and call-for-entries went out by fax. He went on to Leo Burnett and co-founded Contagious before becoming Chief Content Officer at LIONS.
So we wanted to ask him a bigger question:
What wins now?
Because advertising is at another strange inflection point.
AI has made the tools of creativity available to almost everyone.
ChatGPT, Claude and the other major AI platforms are rapidly changing how people search, work, make things and consume media. Yet some of the companies building that future are now turning to advertising agencies, brand-building and very human creative work to differentiate themselves.
Paul thinks that’s telling.
We get into Mother’s work for Claude and its attack on ChatGPT; why an industry flooded with frictionless AI content could put a new premium on human creativity; why craft is ultimately a form of respect for the audience; and whether we’re heading towards a world where “100% human made” becomes something worth signalling.
We also go inside the institutions that have spent decades setting the bar for the industry.
What is Cannes Lions actually for now? Do awards still influence the direction of advertising? What separates work that wins awards from work that actually works? Why might the client be the bravest person on an award-winning team? And is safe, generic “wallpaper” advertising actually the biggest risk a brand can take?
Paul takes us inside AXA’s “Three Words,” one of the standout ideas from Cannes Lions, and the difficult boardroom conversations behind adding domestic violence coverage to its insurance policies. It’s a fascinating example of creativity moving beyond communications and into the business itself.
That leads us somewhere even more interesting: what happens when creative people stop being handed a media plan and start getting closer to the product, the organization and the problem?
We talk Oatly’s Department of Mind Control, why some of advertising’s greatest ideas came from creatives wandering around factory floors, the Bitcoin investment Paul wishes he’d made, why curiosity still matters, and what the next generation should know coming into the business.
And after a career spent thinking about some of the world’s most celebrated advertising, Paul tells us what he’d put on his LinkedIn tombstone: “It’s only advertising.”
Paul Kemp-Robertson is Chief Content Officer at LIONS. He co-founded Contagious and previously worked at Shots and Leo Burnett.
Second Wind is a podcast about the people, ideas and forces reshaping advertising, creativity and marketing.
Hosted by Kerrie Finch and Gully Flowers.
A Second Wind podcast by AKA.
