ORLANDO — Put 200 of the world’s leading senior marketing decision makers in a room and what do you get? An agenda for the future of the craft.

At a gathering in Orlando, Cannes Lions and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) convened more than 200 chief marketing officers to inform how a new CMO Growth Council will debate key issues at next year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The Growth Council was formed earlier this year, chaired by P&G’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard, to share best practice. Now things are ramping up again.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Cannes Lions VP of creative excellence, Simon Cook explains how Orlando and the south of France are converging.

“The council was established in June this year, the very first time it took place,” he says. “And that was 25 global CMOs giving up their time to attend a meeting, a very important meeting in Cannes, where they would discuss the future growth of marketing.

“Through a shortlist of priorities, (they) picked five things that they’re going to focus on for the year that are really going to … drive growth in our industry.

“The next tent pole event was here at the ANA. And again, the 25 CMO’s have come together in partnership with Cannes Lions and the ANA, but this time drawing in a wider community of over 200 CMOs, to discuss and to debate, and to contribute their expertise to the cause.

“I think an amazing amount of progress has been achieved in just two days. And I think it’s very rare these people get to meet on a peer to peer basis to discuss some of their challenges, learn from each other, but ultimately come up with a set of actions which are going to push things forward.”

Outcomes will be discussed at next year’s Cannes Lions, which has also tabled another new strand called CLX, in partnership with MediaLink.

This segment is from CMO Growth Council presented by the ANA and Cannes Lions. Beet.TV coverage is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. Please find more videos from the series here.