During the five-day creative festival, the burgeoning Female Future was a celebrated topic of conversation. Campaigns focused on empowering women were prominent, from an unbiased search engine to a music video encouraging women to check their breasts. Meanwhile, female experts took to the various stages to discuss how brands can be a part of this future.
South Korea-based advertising agency Cheil highlighted the need for Cannes Lionesses as well as Lions in a discussion that explored the all-too-common misrepresentations of Asian women. Offering local nuances from South Korea, China and India, Cheil greater China CEO Pully Chau, its chief operating officer in India Atika Malik and chief creative officer Kate Hyewon Oh sought to challenge its poll results that found that 43% of consumers see Asian women as ‘hard working and conscientious’ and 17% see them as an ‘exotic beauty’.
Later during the festival, Dove, Getty and Girlgaze brought their combined #ShowUs project to Cannes. The project is the largest collection of stock imagery created by female-identifying individuals, with 5,000 un-retouched images taken by a diverse range of creatives from South Africa to Japan. The images, which are available to download via Getty, aim to shatter rigid and algorithmic definitions of beauty, instead offering myriad approaches to female identity. ‘It’s going to be the little incremental changes that fund the revolution,’ said Rebecca Swift, creative insights director at Getty Images.