Cannes Q&A: Entertainment for Sport with Ewan Paterson

This is a newly created category for Cannes this year; why do you think the festival has added it for 2019?

Shouldn’t the question be: why hasn’t it had its own category before? Sport has always been at the heart of so much of our industry’s great work.

How creatively successful do you think the last 12 months have been when it comes to this category?

Nike’s Nothing Beats a Londoner and Colin Kaepernick’s update of Just Do It made 2018 a hard act to follow but I’m sure there are case studies being made in edit suites across the world, as we speak, that will have the Cannes juries voting gold.

Shouldn’t the question be: why hasn’t it had its own category before?

What pieces of work have impressed you the most and why?

How Nike announced their first contracted athlete with cerebral palsy, Justin Gallegos, was spot on. A lesson in getting the tone and delivery just right.

From an advertising perspective, more and more, the worlds of real-life sport and e-sports seem to be merging; is that something that you think is set to continue? 

There’s nothing un-real about e-sports.

How important are social media influencers in this sector?

Sport is unique. People are obsessed. They talk and listen in their millions... a sports campaign that doesn’t influence social media is a dropped ball.

With ‘traditional’ advertising often described as ‘wallpaper’, is entertainment-led advertising content, especially in what is a youth-driver sector, integral for brands to embrace?

There’s always been a ‘tradition’ in advertising to use sports stars to gain attention and get people talking. Everyone who remembers the 70s remembers the Milk Marketing Board using Muhammed Ali in the youth-driven sector. The difference now is the sports stars rightly come from every sport and the advertising lives in every channel.

Where do you think this category is heading over the next few years?

From men’s football to women’s football, women’s netball, wheelchair basketball, e-sports...

There’s always been a ‘tradition’ in advertising to use sports stars to gain attention and get people talking.