Delegates at 2016 Cannes Lions Festival feel the Brexit blues

CANNES: The delegates at 2016 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity woke up to a ‘changed Europe’ post the UK referendum poll results that voted Brexit in. Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP — the London-headquartered largest communication holding group in the world — expressed his disappointment at the results but maintained that the electorate has spoken.

He said, “The resulting uncertainty, which will be considerable, will obviously slow decision-making and deter activity. This is not good news, to say the least. However, we must deploy that stiff upper lip and make the best of it.”

“Four of WPP’s top 10 markets are in western continental Europe, and we must build our presence there even further. This event underlines the importance of implementing WPP's strategy of fast-growth markets (BRICs and Next 11), digital, data, and horizontality,” he said. “Which ironically means getting our people to work together, not apart!” he remarked.

“Having the UK leaving is like when a member of the family is leaving. We work with British clients in the British currency and we have our cost and revenue in British pounds. So for us it’s something which should normally have limited consequences,” said Maurice Lévy, the chairman and chief executive of Publicis Groupe.

A day before the poll results, Michael Roth, CEO of Interpublic, said he's uncomfortable with Brexit being voted in. “That kind of change is disruptive, and we have enough disruption going on to overlay something like this on top of it,” he said.

Roth understands it’s an immigration issue that drove those who wanted to pull out. But he thought there were other ways to address the issue without causing instability in the market.

That said, he clarified he doesn't think Brexit will have a dramatic impact on their business.

“It’ll affect us on a short-term basis because whenever you see disruption, clients want to analyse how it will impact their business. I just don't like disruption at a time when there's so many issues going on in the world. But we will live with the outcome,” he concluded.