Debatable taste at Cannes Lions.

23 June 2026

In front of a slightly baffled pot-pourri of Cannes Lions lanyardees, a quartet of the world's most celebrated creatives took part in a debate about the nature of taste organised by Campaign magazine.

In a discussion about the nature of taste, David Kolbusz and Lynsey Atkin were on one side of the debate with Chaka Sobhani and Rick Brim on the other... at least at the start. The contrived nature of proceedings slowly came unstitched with a consensus forming on the stage as the contributors shifted their positions towards what they actually beloved rather than the positions they'd been asked to take by moderator Maisie McCabe, editor of Campaign

The light-hearted nature of the event was emphasised by McCabe wearing a boxing referee costume and the big screen behind the contributors offering an art director's idea of what a boxing venue looks like from inside the ring. Truly, no expense had been spent on this spectacle.

The light-hearted nature was also emphasised by the evident lack of preparation from the participants, each of whom read mini-essays verbatim rather than using notes to speak more freely. For people who spend a significant part of their working lives presenting ideas in a considered fashion, it was surprising that the 'debate' format seemed to put them so far outside of their comfort zone.

Nonetheless, some salient points were made, most particularly in a broadside against AI delivered by David Kolbusz: "We hear whispers that AI is an existential threat to our industry. Yet I observe that our most seasoned practitioners are far less frightened than those who trade in mediocrity.

"AI is fundamentally regressive because it creates based entirely on statistical pattern recognition. It can only ever recycle what has come before. It is the ultimate machine for producing the safe and the derivative. The rise of AI does not threaten the vanguard of human expression. It threatens to flood our landscapes with a tsunami of the mediocre. It will make the average work cheaper and faster to produce, but it will never make it better."

If you can't be grandiose about advertising at Cannes Lions then when can you? In a move that was echoed by the other contributors when they got their turn in front of the prop mic hanging from the ceiling, Kolbusz ended with a flourish in which he said: "Taste is a muscle. It is a skill, not a trait. Let us commit to the rigorous development of our own taste, and let us continue to produce work that is not merely content, but a meaningful contribution to the grand historical conversation of our species."

“

The rise of AI does not threaten the vanguard of human expression. It threatens to flood our landscapes with a tsunami of the mediocre.

”

David Kolbusz            

Chaka Sobhani's trademark self-deprecation served her well as she opened by paying tribute to the contribution made by Kolbusz and denigrating the text she was about to read: "I got to be honest, when we were prepping for this, we were having a lot of shits and giggles, and this is now a lot more serious than I thought it was going to be. And I'm shitting myself because he didn't tell us he was going to do that. I scribbled down some notes. I'm going to sound like a fucking idiot."

As might be expected, this analysis was a ruse, with Sobhani landing just as many punches as Kolbusz had, even if her jabs were not really aimed at the case he had just made.

Sobhani, representing the perspective that was always going to win, made the important point that taste is inherently subjective. She invoked the culinary reverence of caviar to remind the audience that it is an elitist position to suggest there are universal standards when it comes to taste, because for that to be true, then we would have to accept that taste is being imposed on us by the usual suspects.

She observed that "People laughed at the Impressionists. They said punk was not music. They said graffiti wasn't art, and every single time they were wrong. So whilst excellence exists, no one gets to permanently own the definition of what taste is."

Kolbusz later called this "a blistering rebuke of my argument" but this wasn't quite true. It was fairer to say that Sobhani had skewered an argument that Kolbusz might have made but didn't. And he didn't, in all likelihood, because he agreed with every sensible sentiment expressed by his eminent peer.

The seconders were Lynsey Atkin and Rick Brim and they each took a turn at the front of the stage to ostensibly back up what had gone before. As unfamiliar with debate as the other contributors, they did no such thing. Far from building on any arguments that had already been made, they went off on their own tangents, which, in the case of Brim, took him so far from the central argument that he might as well have delivered it from another stage... perhaps one where the pages of his speech were in the right order!

“

People laughed at the Impressionists. They said punk was not music. They said graffiti wasn't art, and every single time they were wrong. So whilst excellence exists, no one gets to permanently own the definition of what taste is.

”

Chaka Sobhani            

Atkin made an interesting case for an elite understanding of taste, one which - not coincidently - lionised the those with reliable taste by observing that they are the most important presence in the "wood-panelled rooms" where the decisions are made: "If you cast yourself back into those rooms and realise that the people who were good at that decision, and I mean reliably, repeatedly good at that decision have something in common. They're not always the most academic. They're not always the loudest. Sometimes they are the loudest. That's true. But not always. They're not always the ones with the grandest job titles or the holder of the purse strings, but they are generally, without exception, those with the deepest preferences. that people who've spent their lives being professionally curious."

Given that decision makers within an agency actually do have the grandest job titles, it seems likely that Atkin was talking here about award juries rather than those who guide outcomes when work is being made. It's understandable to make this synaptic leap at Cannes Lions without giving it any thought, and taste ought to be an incredibly important component when it comes to deciding who is getting which colour of metal, but it is far from being the most expression of taste in the advertising industry... hard as that may be for the lanyardees to believe.

Rick Brim offered an anarchic perspective as he appeared to push the idea that the concept of taste can inhibit creativity. In that sense, he argued, it is better to have bad taste than to have no taste... though it was unclear how that distinction plays out meaningfully.

In common with the other contributors, Brim opted to quote practitioners from genuine fields of art rather than those who make the confected versions found in advertising. He cited Pablo Picasso as someone who was very suspicious of taste and backed his argument with this mischievous quotation: "Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

A welcome tech failure meant that the audience were unable to ask questions through app, and the audience had to vote by raising hands. Sobhani and Brim easily prevailed and, much as it would be lovely to say this was because of cogently-made arguments, it's actually hard to see how it could have gone any other way.

Taste is in constant flux and cannot be pinned down in a fashion that would allow it to be anything other than subjective.

Sadly, there is a widespread belief that taste can be reduced to an algorithm with this myth being most commonly put forward by those flogging the odious System1.

Human subjectivity is better and, if nothing else, this gimmick-ridden event demonstrated that rather well.