Day Three

Attended: Warner Bros- Passion in story telling, Google master class- the rebrief, nike, Twitter, PHD & eat big fish - challenger brands 


My Final day in At Cannes Lions began with breakfast here: 

OK, that's a lie it was actually a black coffee and a croissant to stay the hangover from the Young Lions party the night before as I rushed to my first seminar of the day - Warner Bros. Passion in story-telling for television. Their guest speaking was Michael Patrick King who had a rousing call to the audience - "Let your creativity be your sword". He said at as storytellers it was our job to break archetypes and defend ideas in a fragmented world that has exploded into opinions. What really came across was his willingness to defend his ideas even when controversial and the reminder that as well as telling stories with passion we also have to sell these ideas in with just as much passion. 


I then attended the Google re-brief session in the young lions zone. This was my favourite sessions of the entire festival. Google have come up with a fantatsic approach to looking again about the industry's approach to the banner ad. They have contacted the curators behind some of the world's most iconic brand ideas such as Coke's "hill top ad" and Avis' " We try harder" - on of the worlds most successful "challenger brands".

It was fascinating to hear these creatives reminiscing about the inception of these campaigns and how they were able to utilise the power behind these idea and continue their effectiveness through new media. Their advice was to utilise the power of the idea. Google have created a documentary exploring the journey that these creatives went on with some creatives from Google which was screened on Friday at the festival - something I'm really looking I'm watching once it becomes widely available. 

The afternoon sessions were all seminars looking at the way a brand has launched an online  and fully integrated product as nike did with their fuel band. This seminar also bought up some interesting ideas about brands using other credits as currency and as an incentive and as an engagement metric. 


Twitter was up next, creating stories within a conversations. Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo spoke about Twitter's medium which, he feels is emotion. He put forward that the best way to operate a successful campaign in a multi facetted world of opinions is to run a reactive campaign. His argument is that in a medium such as Twitter where news and events are no longer filtered by a single view point but are reported and shared directly that we must creative campaigns with multi perspectives.

Day Two

Mobile and Media day at Cannes. Attending: App Promo workshop, Starcom & TED, Mindshare, Facebook

Day two kicked off with my first workshop about marketing and promoting apps. A more hands on session where we were split up into groups to come up with a mini marketing strategy for a game based on Plant's vs. Zombies- They pitched that right! 

The workshop was lead by App Promo and they highlighted the importance in "getting the math right" before embarking on any marketing activity and also spoke about getting robust data in place to support an accurate CPA. This seems to be a common theme in Cannes this year- using strong data as a foundation for a motivating creative platform. 

Then it was onto a more Media focused day. We checked out Starcom & TED's presentation where we were reminded once again that creativity is inherent throughout all industries and that inspiration can come from anywhere and everywhere. Whether it’s from an Ethiopian folk singer, or a designer at MIT the more we take the trouble to look around us and engage with the wider world the more brilliant our ideas will be. - This idea has been a feature of Cannes and resonates with me because I think that this is right at the heart of the "Know More" culture we're cultivating at Rocket. 

More media insight came in the form of the presentation Mindshare gave us in conjunction with Fredrik Haren talking to us about Global brand. Fredrik was one of my favourite speakers of the conference so far and shared examples of brands beyond the digital arena who are now becoming global. He spoke not just abut brands who are moving away from nationalistic identity but also about having a Global mind-set to allow yourself to be creative on a Global scale. This tied in with what I saw yesterday at TBWA and Visa who encouraged us to search for global truths that are core to these brands to enable us to tell stories, which are just as palpable to an audience in South Korea as they are in France. I managed to grab a couple of copies of the beta version of his book on the subject so these will be on loan in the Rocket Library very soon.

On to the hot ticket – Facebook: Paul Adams, Global head of design at Facebook- his presentation was themed around the idea that as we are inherently social beings, that what we do becomes inherently social. He advocates, as one would expect, the importance of integrating social in all aspects of advertising. He also talked to us about how the incomprehensible amounts of data that we currently have at our disposal is being socially arrogated – by that I mean moving towards a model of consumption is based in large part on personalised experience and content that is recommended to you based on stated interests and friend suggestions.

I personally can see the value of this in some respects but I find that in some ways it could also limit my access to the new, something beyond my own experience. While its great that I could discover a new band because my friend is listening to them on spotify and I know we have similar tastes I wouldn’t want to experience that at the expense of experiencing something that I could stumble upon. The potential possibilities beyond the technology are still fascinating and its exciting to be part of that unfolding.

After our Facebook finale we headed to the OMG toast to Cannes. Nouvelle Vague was playing – my personal highlight was this guitarist who was sporting a fetching pair of tiger trousers and an impressive hairstyle!

It was then on to the Young Lions party. Apparently what happens in Cannes stays in Cannes I will tell you that we did see a Conga line and our party was a lot more rowdy than the grown up lions party which was going on further down the beach....

On the awards front it was a great night for OMG as a group - Grand Prix went to MGOMD UK for Google voice search, and in PHD UK McCain won a silver lion for best use of outdoor. - Big Congratulations to all.