On the road to creative excellence, what's your leadership strategy?

Cannes Creative Leaders Programme

Leaders in today’s advertising and other creative communication industries face an unprecedented array of challenges and opportunities. Among the most pressing issues are new business and compensation models, innovative practices for managing creativity and creative organisations, and rapidly changing technologies and relationships with consumers.

To help creative executives lead their teams, agencies and companies more successfully, Cannes Lions teamed up with the Berlin School of Creative Leadership in 2010 to launch a new venture called the Cannes Creative Leaders Programme (CCLP), a two-week training initiative taking place in Berlin and Cannes.  After two successful years, the CCLP is returning for 2012.

Combining festival programme insights, classroom lessons, and their own experiences, over the course of this innovative programme participants analyse current changes and apply them to an individual plan that lays out their leading strategy on the road to creative excellence.

The programme is designed for those either already in a leadership position or preparing to assume such a position in advertising or other creative industries. The programme gives participants the tools, insights and actionable ideas to help them lead for more creative excellence in their organisations.

The programme addresses three areas essential for advancing creative excellence:

(1) the rapidly changing creative communication industries landscape;
(2) digital and media transformation; and 
(3) the management of creatives and creativity.

How is the programme organised?

Week 1: Participants are based in Berlin, Germany at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, one of the world's leading creative training institutions, which has built a global reputation with its innovative Executive MBA programme to help creative industry executives lead for excellence. There they engage in six days of intensive training from Berlin School professors, studying real-world aspects of current advertising and other creative communication industry leadership and organisational practice through lectures, interactive case discussions, and small group exercises. Together, the class sessions and team exercises provide a substantive foundation for analysing effective leadership, organizational design, and change management. Week One also affords essential preparation for capitalising on the resources of Cannes Lions in the second week and for the development of the individual plans for building creative excellence.

Week 2: Participants move on to Cannes, France where, as Festival delegates, they will have privileged access to the 2012 Cannes Lions Festival. Each day combines exclusive lectures, discussions and group work with immersion in the incredibly rich and varied Cannes Lions environment. Accessing Festival workshops, Master Classes, and seminars deepens classroom learnings and advances participants’ understanding of these challenges and their skills in addressing them. Special guests offer further insights on today’s leadership challenges. Throughout the week, and supported by individual advisement, participants continue to refine their plans for leading their respective agencies or companies to greater creative excellence. The course concludes with the presentations of these individual plans and a group assessment of how they can take skills honed in the programme forward to generate real impact and produce a lasting culture of creativity and innovation in their companies and across the industry.