It's the men of maths against crazy men in the world of ad

The Cannes Lions Festival is the largest annual gathering of the advertising industry, a place where the best campaigns are honored at lavish ceremonies and where customers are wooed by the chilled bottles of local rosé. But this year, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were attending an accounting conference of the 1980s.

Accenture and PwC yachts were flanking the beach, and the largest billboard on the side of the Palais des Festivals of the Cannes Congresses. , the company behind the mainframes. Deloitte has organized a full week of events on the future of marketing at the five star Barriere Le Majestic hotel. Accenture won its first Grand Prix, for an advertisement for the Times of London. McKinsey hosted a cocktail party on the roof

. Their disproportionate presence reflects the seismic shift of Madison Avenue. Traditional agencies are already under pressure as the likes of Facebook and Google take advantage of marketing budgets and remove agency middlemen. But consultants are an even bigger threat in persuading customers to reallocate their advertising dollars.

Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, McKinsey and PwC argue that they can save money by helping employees of a company to take over a lot of the work done by the agencies. And they urge customers to divert much of their marketing budgets from TV spots and billboards, the traditional domain of agencies, and to fund digital initiatives such as mobile apps

. get to be where the consultants excel. "This industry needs to reorganize," says Alicia Hatch, director of marketing at Deloitte Digital, where the business turnover grew by nearly a third to reach $ 4.1 billion ($ 6 billion). dollars) last year. "It's really about responding to what brands need today rather than trying to move past models into the future."

Accenture has taken an extra step in recent weeks by starting to buy online advertising space for its customers. Traditional agencies have long purchased television time, newspaper pages and bulk website sites, selling them to customers at a profit. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, these works typically account for up to 20% of the business turnover of major advertising groups and are generally the most profitable. Accenture says its consultants have developed expertise in the complex world of digital space shopping that will help customers save money.

Advertisers say that Accenture has an unfair advantage because it checks advertising campaigns and knows how much the agencies are paying for space. Accenture says that it will strictly separate this part of the operation. "The agencies feel threatened," says Ben Bilboul, managing director of Karmarama, a leading UK agency acquired by Accenture Interactive in 2016. "Their reaction is revealing of the importance of their business models."

Groups such as WPP, Publicis and Omnicom include digital divisions offering similar services. IT consultants have a strong lead. Half of the top 10 companies in the advertising industry in the world are now consulting companies, according to the commercial publication Ad Age. Accenture Interactive is the largest standalone digital agency in the world, with a business turnover of 6.5 billion US dollars last year. Although this represents a third of WPP's sales, it increased 35% last year versus 1.7% for WPP.

After decades of helping businesses, consultants are using their technical expertise to help marketers manage a complex ad. Antonio Lucio, who oversees the marketing of computers and other gadgets sold by HP. Advertisers must now analyze tons of customer data to design persuasive campaigns, show them to the right people at the right time, and then measure the effect on sales. "Who can add more value to the totality of this system today? The consultant," says Lucio, who hired consultants to help his company better understand the impact of its promotions. "They know the data, they know the analytics, they have everything."

The Mad Men denigrate the threat of Math Men. Managing campaigns on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, Amazon, as well as traditional channels such as TV, radio and newspapers, requires in-depth experience that only agencies provide, says Jonathan Nelson, head of digital at Omnicom. "We bring all the elements together," he says

and marketers still place a high value on creative ideas that make a viral announcement and resonate with customers, an area in which IT companies have their doubts. "They're good at technology, but I have not seen a real creative impact in the way you see the agencies," says Keith Weed, Marketing Director of Unilever, which spends $ 7 billion a year. like soap Dove, but did not hire one of the consultants to design a big campaign. "The biggest return on investment you get is great creativity."

The consultants aim to bridge this gap as they purchase traditional agencies and integrate their creative chops with digital know-how. With a market capitalization roughly five times greater than that of WPP and Publicis, Accenture is a credible suitor for one or the other, according to Natixis brokerage. Accenture is dismissing the prospect for now, but says it's planning more acquisitions on a smaller scale. "We want to help brands build strong relationships with consumers," says Joy Bhattacharya, general manager of Accenture Interactive in the UK and Ireland

. David Wheldon, president of the World Federation of Advertisers, a lobby group. "If I were sitting in an agency, I would be scared," he says. "It's a kind of existential threat to the industry."