Paul Worthington writing about the recent Cannes Festival of Creativity:

…nostalgia is rapidly becoming a major idea d’jour among marketers targeting that oh-so-desirable “Gen Z” demographic.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that if you were to walk around Cannes over the past month or so, you’d be forgiven for thinking brands no longer had any interest in the future: Lisa Frank notebooks. Tamagotchi cameos. Taglines from 1999. Brand after brand strapping itself to the past, seeking refuge in comfort. Instacart. Mattel. Burger King. Skoda. All treating relevance as if it were a rerun.

But along with nostalgia, another theme was present at Cannes—differentiation:

Cannes was also a parade of brands betting on something riskier. Something sharper. Something new. Liquid Death. Stripe. Tesla. Anduril. Companies building out from belief systems focused resolutely on what makes them unique. Making things you couldn’t have predicted because they weren’t remixes of the past—they were statements of the future.

Worthington argues that these two themes are diametrically opposed. Nostalgia brands are “fundamentally risk-averse” and feel safe. While differentiated brands are “risk-embracing,” betting that consumers are desperate for “something weird, sharp, and built from scratch.”

Jeff Beer, writing for Fast Company about a documentary on Ilon Specht, the copywriter who wrote the iconic line for L’Oreal, “Because I’m Worth It.”

In the film, she describes male colleagues who were always arguing with her and taking credit when something worked. She recalled how during pitch and idea meetings for L’Oreal Preference hair color, male colleagues had suggested an idea that cast the woman as an object, rather than the subject. “I was feeling angry. I’m not interested in writing anything about looking good for men. Fuck ‘em,” says an elderly, and terminally ill, Specht in the film, before looking straight down the camera to the male camera operator. “And fuck you, too.”

The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions a couple weeks ago as it was commissioned by L’Oreal.

The original ad for L’Oreal Preference hair color that first used the line, “Because I’m Worth It” is a single shot of a woman walking towards the camera, explaining why she likes it, and how it makes her feel.

In the doc, we find out that spot almost never happened. In fact, Specht went behind her bosses’ back to create the ad after her agency produced and the brand approved a spot with almost the exact same script, except it was a man speaking the words on behalf of his wife, walking silently beside him. It’s clear that 50 years later it still made Specht angry. Angry enough to not want to talk about advertising or that campaign ever again.

Elliot Vredenburg writing for Fast Company:

Which is why creative direction matters more now than ever. If designers are no longer the makers, they must become the orchestrators. This isn’t without precedent. Rick Rubin doesn’t read music or play instruments. Virgil Abloh was more interested in recontextualizing than inventing. Their value lies not in original execution but in framing, curation, and translation. The same is true now for brand designers. Creative direction is about synthesizing abstract ideas into aesthetic systems—shaping meaning through how things feel, not just how they look.