Whether you know the Palais like the back of your hand or are new to the Cannes experience, it’s always good to hear what fresh-faced first-timers make of the sensory overload and wine-drenched experience. Through winning Gold in the Young Media category of Canada’s National Advertising Awards, OMD assistant strategists Mats Kawana and Troy Edwards attended the Cannes Lions 58th International Festival of Creativity this week.
They posted their impressions at Young and in Cannes, a blog presented in association with Marketing. With the dust (or beach sand, shall we say) beginning to settle on the fest, here’s a compilation of some of the observations the duo gathered along the way (spoiler alert: they spotted a hit-and-run on their first night).
Mats and Troy’s journey started last weekend as they took a Toronto-Montreal-Zurich-Nice route to get to Cannes. Troy wrote about how excited he was to be going to the festival for the first time. “As a 24-year-old who has only just started in the industry, I feel truly lucky to be able to experience what I’m about to.”
Mats wrote of his first impressions of touching down in France: “We arrived at 5 p.m., being welcomed by a blast of heat, cool breeze, and palm trees—washing away all our exhaustion and breathing life back into us. Our taxi ride from Nice to Cannes showed us how truly beautiful this place is. After a quick check-in to the hotel, stroll around our surrounding area and a quick visit to the Palais de Festival, we were ready to take on Cannes Lions.”
Describing an absurd hit-and-run on their first night (which involved the man whose parked car had been hit running after the driver who’d hit it), Mats wrote “As we sat on the patio watching the events unfold, we could hear the classical French accordion and violin playing in the distance—we knew this was going to be a great trip.”
On Day 1 of the festival, Mats went to the “goviral” seminar, which included goviral executive chairman Jimmy Maymann and Brandwashed author Martin Lindstrom.
Mats wrote of the seminar: “[Lindstrom] reveals interesting details about his tested theory of 1:9:90 illustrating the social behaviour of the masses and the significance of word-of-mouth. With exponential growth over time, he emphasizes the importance of using offline advertising first and using it much earlier than online. The long-term impacts are much greater and reach a higher level of viral. With powerful brands, there are lasting impressions that subconsciously effect consumers, which directly correlate to the success of effective viral.”
Another first-day session, this one put on by SapientNitro, talked of a social marketing theory about building long-term relationships with target audiences. Troy commented on a successful social media campaign by Lady Gaga that Jennifer Frommer, head of brand partnerships at Interscope Records, mentioned during the session: “Lady Gaga as a brand has a powerful relationship with her audience of ‘little monsters’ (two of which were in the audience of 400 at the Palais), but has worked to build it through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In return for obliging ‘Mother Monster’s’ requests, such as trending a certain topic or liking posts, Gaga’s fans are rewarded with sneak peeks and special content—a transaction that only happens through social media.” As Troy said, “The theory as a whole isn’t exactly revolutionary, but it does clearly outline a benefit of social marketing.”
Day 2 of the festival was a mix of business and pleasure for Mats and Troy. As Troy wrote: “After a few seminars we came back to the hotel to drop off our laptops (the wi-fi at the festival was being less than cooperative). There is a tiny sandwich and pizza place around the corner from the hotel that always seems busy, so we stopped there for lunch. NOW WE GET IT. Everyone back home told us that the food was amazing, no matter where you ate, and this was our first real experience of that. I had a chicken sandwich on a baguette and Mats had one on a soft bun. Deeeeeeelicious! A few more seminars and it was off to the beach. Our time there was brief and consisted mostly of talking about the blog and fighting off French children armed with water guns and fistfuls of sand, but it was great to finally get some sun.”
On Wednesday, Troy posted about the BBDO session “Your next billion.” He wrote: “BBDO theorizes that each of the four main screens that human beings consume content on carry their own personality or psychological characteristics, based on the way we as humans feel about them. The breakdown is as follows: TV is ‘Everyman & jester’ – very little effort on your part to have enjoyment with it, part of the family; PC is ‘Sage’—a friend, competitor, older-sibling type, a guide, has every answer you may need; Mobile is ‘lover’ – the most personal device, comes with expectations of things to come, as with any relationship; and Tablet is ‘wizard’ – exciting and does things you didn’t think were possible.”
As Troy summed up: “The takeaway from this seminar was that moving forward, advertisers are really going to have to look at using unique executions on multiple screens (i.e. no more shooting a TV spot and then streaming it in three different places). Content is being consumed simultaneously on multiple screens more and more and successful brands, media planners, etc. will need to find a way to leverage that to get to their next billion viewers.”
Mats took in the Malcolm Gladwell session. As it turns out, the famed author failed to get a job when he tried in Canada. As Mats wrote: “Gladwell says… he applied at every agency in Toronto, only to realize we [Canadians] work at a much slower rate during our hiring process. ‘I’m still looking, if anyone who knows them could just give them a little push.’ Already being excited about the calibre of seminars so far today, I was looking forward to where this was going.”
Mats also wrote about Gladwell’s “sort of Tim Burton/Christopher Walken appearance” and about Gladwell’s guide to success, which included limiting the resources available: “During times of desperation, the underdog—with everything to lose and limited time and money—break through as implementers. Xerox failed to satisfy consumer needs with their invention of the mouse and icon interface. They had infinite resources and time. Apple ‘tinkered’ the technology with a clear objective—to appeal to a broader audience at a much lower cost. Apple and Xerox switched places over the years as the dominant electronic corporation.” Mats also wrote about how Gladwell said it’s okay to come late to the game. As Mats wrote, “Social network giant Facebook came in after Friendster and MySpace, well beyond the time social media took off as an everyday platform. The delay offered insights into the direction on the still-new social media and gave Facebook the opportunity to jump ahead of the curve.”
Check out Mats and Troy’s full, unedited blog entries here.
