The strains of coping with the realities of the digital age began to tell on some of the elder statesmen of the advertising world who gathered for the Cannes Lions ad industry junket this week (Read Carlos Grande’s latest Cannes diary here).

Amid a week of ad industry soulbearing, Sir Martin Sorrell stirred up internet bloggers when he described the internet as “the most socialistic force you’ve ever seen” while Maurice Saatchi sounded the death knell of the old advertising world in an age of short attention spans.