Dear Sir Hegarty, I need my 20 minutes back

Time of India

15 hours ago

By Mithila Saraf
This morning, I had a choice to make with my time at the
Cannes Lions Festival
. I could attend a talk about winning a Grand Prix or
Sir John Hegarty
's talk titled 'Adapt or Die: Why Giants Can't Dance.' I chose the latter, because:
a. Sir John Hegarty is a legend.
b. I'm part of a growing agency and it promised to talk about broader business.
c. It was in Debussy while the other one was in the Basement Stage, and I might have been classist about that.
As I stood in the queue, someone said, "What is he going to say that he hasn't said on LinkedIn already?" and I shrugged it off. In hindsight, even a recap of one of his LinkedIn articles would have been better.
Sir John Hegarty's talk was a lesson in irony; here's why:
His first point was that AI is not a tool, it's a collaborator. Which is funny because at that same moment I asked ChatGPT 'How is AI influencing advertising?' And it said the same. exact. thing. Here's a screenshot if you don't believe me.He said a 'Founder should never die,' i.e., their philosophy should never be forgotten and should always be carried on by the company, quoting the likes of Disney and Chanel. Which is ironic because it is the opposite of what seems to have happened to his namesake agency, BBH, which is widely believed to be a shadow of what it was under his leadership.It had a weird AI video clip of John Hegarty's younger self, and present John told past John to start an agency, work for no one but the client, and be the Chairman + ECD. In a talk all about being true to the brand's and founder's original philosophy, one would hope that we'd get to hear John's younger self's original philosophy. Instead, we got older John telling younger John to use moisturizer.
This was only my first of the many, many talks to come, and I wish I had gone to the Grand Prix one. Here's a request: we all are already using AI like it's second skin; we don't think it's a bad thing. We've been talking about
brand philosophy
, including Nike, Airbnb, and Patagonia, since our first day in advertising, and we all know that one can make their clone using AI. Anselmo Ramos, legendary Founder of global agency Gut, posted this morning that only 0.06% of the
advertising industry
attends Cannes. People have chosen the best of the best of the best of their various companies to send them here. And many of us are already disheartened because our work hasn't won. Let's make
Cannes Lions
worth it.
P.S. I'm the BIGGEST fan of Sir John Hegarty and his work. This rant is probably the result of my expectations being too high. Not taking away from his decades of excellence!
(The writer, chief executive officer of Famous Innovations, is an attendee at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025. Views expressed are personal.)