Lions assemble

Cheesy I know, but it really does feel like yesterday since I got the email saying I'd been selected to come here to the Cannes Lions festival of creativity and  now I'm actually here looking at this poster:

Top 3 three things I already love about Cannes:
1. Spotting fellow festival goers (easily identifiable by their thick rimmed spectacles)
2. The biggest # I've ever seen (#Canneslions) - picture will follow.
3. Palm trees

3 things I wasn't expecting:
1. The sheer number of fellow festival goers in thick rimmed spectacles
2. Realising that there simply won't be enough hours in the day to do and see and drink everything that I want to!
3. Having to use Blogger when its auto translated into French :-( je suis une imbecile!

Have to be up early for registration. Will update tomorrow.

Keep it Cannes.

A Note On Locality

I thought it was really nice to see a bit of brand sensitivity and a great bit of localised planning from Adidas. The picture below shows an outdoor campaign that the sports giant have been running recently in preparation for the Olympics in East London. Promoting home-grown talent and encouraging the five London Olympic boroughs, I spotted this one in (Lewisham), some of which are not the most affluent in the city.  Seeing this 6 sheet at local bus stops in Lewisham is a really excellent use of localised outdoor planning which I think should be commended. Planning locally in this way can resonate as strongly with an audience as a large, iconic outdoor site. Its also a great boost for our athletes and I think is a good way to make the games seem relevant and inspiring to young people in that borough.

The creative is also effective. The Adidas branding remaining very subtle in deference to the athlete’s name- she isn’t even wearing clothes with prominent logos. The themes in this outdoor campaign also echoes the wider TV positioning with Wretch 32 asking for Demos from people, giving consumers to enter to join him on stage.

In a world of big brands and big brand campaigns I think it’s easy for this small amount of activity (and probably spend) to run unacknowledged especially with a brand such as Adidas, who tend to make their big splash with grand TV campaigns and large, impactful outdoor sites. However I was really impressed by the planning behind this and think it’s one of the nicest ways that brands have interacted with Team GB athletes. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do as the countdown to the games continues.

Here’s my other favourite Olympic campaign by P&G – I’m a sentimentalist so it’s no surprise that this ad evokes John Lewis levels of emotion (however my boyfriend keeps asking who’s sponsoring the Dad’s which is a fair point)

http://wklondon.com/news/view/procter-and-gamble-best-job

"Do you want to work in advertising because of Mad Men?"

The answer, quite simply is “yes, yes I do”. Not for the hard liquor and the fabulous frocks but for the way the industry reacts the television events that shows like Mad Men create. In honour of the new series airing now, on a network that carries commercials, Sky Atlantic’s special “double bill Season Premiere” a couple of weeks ago was accompanied by specially supplied retro commercials. Amazing to think that 50 years on Have a Break, Have a KitKat is still at the heart of it’s communication strategy.

A cynic might say, with an average audience of 72,000 (BARB) across the two launch episodes, that it’s a lot of effort to reach a fraction of the number people that a show like Corrie gets on a regular basis. It also raises questions as to why Sky, who’s revenue comes predominately from subscribers rather than advertising revenue, would go to lengths to source the ads. As a planner this is exactly the kind of creative thinking that makes a brand come to life, even the most iconic brands can’t help but benefit from the additional standout that a stunt like this affords. 

            

I’m not sure if this is the first time sky have adopted it but I also noticed that they are now putting the Man Men title screen before the Blackberry sponsorship bumpers.

I wondered if this might have something to do with the way that viewers are using sponsorship bumpers as navigation points when they fast-forward through the commercial breaks (why would anyone want to do such a thing?). Thinkbox have done some quite interesting work on Digital TV Recorder (DTR’s) users using on screen visuals as markers for when to restart watching and I thought that this might be an attempt at a new navigation point- a little nudge to get viewers to pause before the sponsorship bumper so that they watch all of it.  

Right, now I’m off for an Old Fashioned and a power lunch. 

Cannes, A Rocketeer’s Guide

On a wintery Tuesday afternoon my day was brightened when I saw an email from our Head of Planning at PHD who congratulated me on being selected as one of the agency’s four delegates chosen to attend the Young Lions festival at Cannes this year. I can’t deny that when I submitted my application to be chosen to attend that the thought of the South of France in June wasn’t a factor but, truthfully, attending The Cannes festival has definitely been on my advertising bucket list for a few years. Graduating from Manchester in the post credit crunch recruitment freeze of 2009, I worked for a TV production company looking at YouTube clips of the festival during my lunch break (I’m a big advertising geek!). Now, to be heading out to Cannes in a few months is a really exciting prospect and the thought of a week surrounded by sun, sea and the most exciting group of creative talent in the world is definitely something I’m very much looking forward to.

One of my objectives for going to Cannes is to represent my agency, Rocket. For those who haven’t really come across us yet, Rocket is a planning and communications agency comprising of a very creative group of planners, buyers, strategists and thinkers who are funny, clever, loud, eccentric, proud, and very passionate about the work they do. We are part of Omnicom media group and a sister agency of PHD.

Our agency position is to “Know More” and it is very much in the spirit of knowing more that I head towards glamorous Cannes. I started my career in planning as a grad who didn’t really know that much about media and its role in the communications mix. After 18 months and some very steep learning curves, I now know the crucial role that planning plays in a brand’s relationship with its consumers. 

What I’m keen to use Cannes for is to discover how we can develop this role and to pass on knowledge gained to help Rocket to apply this knowledge gained to further our clients businesses.

Stay tuned as I plan my way to Cannes and hopefully share some interesting insights and thoughts picked up along the way.

A x