One could easily be forgiven for wondering why Elon Musk was in attendance at the Cannes Lions advertising festival this week. After all, it’s been less than a year since he responded to companies pulling their ad spends from his social platform, X, by saying, “go fuck yourself.” Wherefore the sudden about-face?
And yet, there Musk was on Wednesday, speaking on stage with WPP CEO Mark Read—who wasted no time before addressing the elephant in the room.
“Welcome to the heart of the advertising industry,” Read said directly after the introductions (and after a very large crowd had lined up to see the talk) as seen in a video posted from the event. “Now, back in November, you had a message to us. You told us to sort of go fuck ourselves. So, maybe we start there.”
