Other than the creative itself, Cannes has always been a difficult spectacle to watch. I’m sure it’s more fun to actually go as a contestant. But something caught our eye in this year’s Cannes coverage.
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity introduced the ‘Creative Data’ Lion in 2015, and in the inaugural year, there wasn’t even a winner. This year’s winner is a campaign called ‘JFK Unsilenced’.
It’s the speech President John F Kennedy was going to give in Dallas on November 22, 1963. In fact, he was driving in a top-down motorcade to deliver it when he was assassinated. On paper, the speech would be very powerful for us to read today. The JFK Unsilenced project went a step further. It used artificial intelligence (AI) to stitch Kennedy’s voice into the speech he never gave in real life. CereProc, a British audio tech company, analysed recordings from over 800 Kennedy speeches and build a database of words, letter sounds, inflections and cadences from them.
If you remember where you were when JFK was shot, you will find the JFK Unsilenced recording both eerie and moving. Even if you are more youthful than that (and most of you are), you will find the 55-year-old content to be inspiring and provocative.
Have a look/listen here.
Here we have AI as the critical tool in the execution of a very emotional message, actually bringing humanity to the creative. This is a brilliant creative use of technology. It’s also a timely reminder of what some still believe is the responsibility of the United States Commander in Chief and America’s responsibility to the world. One would naturally assume that JFK Unsilenced is politically motivated. But that’s another interesting part of this story.
The client is The Times newspaper. Not the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times, from whom you might expect this kind of carefully-crafted left-leaning/Democratic message. The client is The Times of London and the agency is Rothco of Ireland. The Times of London is generally considered to be in the middle of the UK political spectrum. It’s owned by News Corp, originally a Rupert Murdoch company. That means the Times of London is stablemate to The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both with a definite American right-leaning Republican political bias.
So this is not a political message—and it likely wouldn’t be at Cannes if it was. JFK Unsilenced is part of The Times’ ‘Find Your Voice’ campaign. It is, in fact, a very literal translation of the overall campaign concept. It’s just a great idea—AI bringing creative to life.
Or is AI bringing life to creative?
- John F Kennedy portrait credit: © Yousuf Karsh, 1960. Like personal training, portrait photo sessions can be surprisingly intimate. Karsh’s recollection of his photo sessions with JFK, including the moment that resulted in this portrait, may be read here.
