Last month saw the 69th International Film Festival descend on the French Riviera resort of Cannes, with all its red carpet glitz and glamour. With acres of coverage in newspapers and the fashion press, the festival’s appeal has spread far beyond the pages of Variety or Screen International.

In a couple of weeks’ time the Cote d’Azur town will host another global event: the International Festival of Creativity, adland’s annual awards show and conference.  This affair is unlikely to spread beyond the marketing and advertising press – after all, it’s just a bunch of boring, bearded and self-congratulatory ad execs and creatives, sitting around in their cliques, drinking rosé – isn’t it?

Well, that might have been a fair accusation a few years ago – and no doubt there will still be elements of that this year – but Cannes has quietly been changing over the last few years.

Significantly, the name was changed, from the International Advertising Festival to the Festival of Creativity. It’s not just about ads any more. Content, data and technology are playing major roles in the festival.

The glamour is still there but the emphasis has shifted

The big global media and tech companies now have a regular, and increasingly prominent presence in Cannes: from Google and Facebook to Adobe, IBM and Oracle. Big advertising means big data, and big money now too.

Last year a major new category of awards and festival program was introduced: the Cannes Innovation Lions.  Positioned at the intersection of Data, Technology and Ideas, the Innovation Lions focus on exploring how data and technology can act as catalysts for creativity. And it’s not just ‘big data’ and ‘big tech’: if you hadn’t noticed, start-ups are now ‘hot’ in adland.

Increasingly, agencies and their clients (the advertisers) are looking at ways to supercharge, or disrupt, their own thinking, but traditionally big corporates struggle to do this themselves.

That’s where the start-ups come in, and that’s why we’re now seeing new ventures and partnerships between brands and the start-up community, from Unilever’s Foundry; to ASOS and Wayra’s new Fashion Tech venture; to the Barclay’s Accelerator; or the Coke Foundation.

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The UK MadTech sector is leading the way, and at Cannes this year there will be a special event for start-ups, hosted by the Unilever Foundry and Collider.  50 start-ups have been selected (out of over 300 that applied) to go to Cannes and speed date with industry leaders, and network with the CMOs and CTOs of big business.

Here at Havas  (one of the supposed ‘big global ad agency networks’) we passionately believe we can’t do it all alone, and that’s why we are on a mission to find the best madtech and creativity to power the work we do for our clients.

For us, that means partnering with data and tech partners both big and small, from our Havas Cognitive partnership with IBM Watson, to supporting grass roots initiatives like Start-Up Weekend in London, or hosting hackathons for clients like O2, with teams made up from universities and the young entrepreneurs community.

So for me it’s great to see that the Cannes Lions festival is embracing this thinking too, with meet ups and networking sessions, plus awards that celebrate the best data and tech-fuelled creativity in the world. And that’s why I’m going to Cannes this year – as a representative of a ‘big agency’ representing clients with ‘big budgets’ – but first and foremost on the hunt for talent, ideas and innovation.

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For sure, there will likely be some hit and miss sessions at the Festival, and there’s always a fair degree of navel-gazing from the ad industry. But I am most looking forward to meeting the crazy / creative / collaborative people from the start-up community, who I think represent the most exciting future of the communications and advertising industry right now.

I can’t promise I will shun the rosé altogether, but I can promise I will champion innovation from the big guys to the little guys too.