A Walk in The Hall: What a Teacup Taught Me About Storytelling at Cannes

By Jen Brog, 2025 Future Famer & Group Art Supervisor at Elevate Healthcare

When I sat down to attend the Cannes Creative Review, I was expecting to hear about the prevalence of AI in the industry. I figured I would spend the evening watching reels built to show how this technology has innovated the advertising space and leave with a list of things to try on Monday. What I heard instead was a message about the importance of storytelling and human interactions within the creative process.

As the different advertisements were presented, the central focus was always about how, if a story is compelling and told well, it can have a tremendous impact on the product. The emotional connection that we can have towards a narrative was evident during the IKEA series. The specific spot that resonated with me the most, included a widower sitting at his dining room table with a cup of coffee. There was no dialogue or cuts, just a single line of text across the frame that read “he is starting to forget, but he will always remember that his wife liked tea”. Then there, at the end of the table, is a teacup. The ad didn’t need a celebrity or fancy visual effects to hold my attention. It worked because it focused on a connection that is central to the human experience and allowed the viewer to emotionally relate to the story. IKEA didn’t sell me a teacup. They sold me life, and then quietly pointed to the object on the table. As I was watching this series, the themes that grabbed my attention were imperfection and relatability. The ad is gripping because it does not try to be hyper stylized and because it looks like a dining room that could belong to me or someone, I care about. 

The focus on people across every spot, hit on something specific about how I approach each job that comes across my desk. In the healthcare advertising space, we are trained to be informative and clear in our approach, and we should be as prescribers and patients deserve accuracy. However, knowing your audience is a key factor in creating a compelling idea. While information is necessary, so is building an empathetic connection between your audience and the product. Individuals gravitate towards concepts that feel relatable—the hurdle to overcome, is how to strike the correct balance.

As the review came to an end, the topic of client, medical, and legal restrictions took center stage. The general idea was that if an idea is strong, the guardrails don’t matter. While I appreciated that perspective, I couldn’t help but feel that in the world of healthcare advertising, the guardrails can feel very real. Fair balance approaches, safety language, and what regulatory will and won’t accept are constant roadblocks the best ideas face and require innovative approaches and collaboration to overcome. With that said, I felt that the core message; constraints are not the reason work comes out flat, is a good reminder. A bigger budget and a longer timeline wouldn’t have necessarily improved the IKEA ads. They were effective because they went back to basics and focused on telling relatable stories. I’ve been on the other side of that. I’ve watched concepts get altered through many rounds of edits until what’s left is technically approvable and emotionally lifeless. I’ve told myself the review process did that and sometimes it did. However, often the idea just was not strong enough to survive contact with the restrictions.

My key take away from this experience is to remember the power of connection. When starting a new project, the first question that should be asked is not what do we need to say, but what is the one human moment here? If we can’t capture that, we are not ready to design yet. Expanding the budget or adding a new tool won’t fix the project, if we do not understand the story we are trying to convey. As an Art Supervisor, I need to push myself and help my team to ask whether we have found the big idea yet. We need to take the time to uncover that special human element or “teacup” that will draw our consumers toward a brand.