I’m sitting in the garden restaurant of my hotel having breakfast on a Sunday morning, reflecting on my week at Cannes 2011.
It’s been a week of knowledge, learning, networking, discussions, high expectations and ultimately winning glorious gold for a rare and select few. It’s good to look back on the highlights of a week spent in the hot Riviera sun.
One of the things I love is that for this one week our industry, which is notoriously competitive, comes together as friends and colleagues; the Canadians against the Americans and so on. We praise the Canadian agencies that win against an onslaught of brilliance from around the globe.
We marvel at the sheer creativity of the winning work, and secretly get angry inside wishing we did work as inspiring, as insightful and as compelling.
Saturday night, sitting in the Grand Auditorium of the Palais with 3,000 others (and hundreds more in other theatres watching the live video feed), we’re all anticipating who would win gold and what would be the Grand Prix winners. We’re chatting, giving educated guesses at whether Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” would get gold, where Nike’s “Write the Future” campaign would end up, and how many Canadian golds would be won, (alas only one for Skittles) and while all grabbed gold Lions there were some other excellent examples on display that night.
The creative highlight of the evening and perhaps the work overall that impressed me the most was Droga5’s work for Bing – using Jay-Z’s new book Decoded in such a unique way by taking pages of the book and bringing them to life in the very places that are referenced and using the Bing search engine to allow people to stitch the entire book together prior to its publishing date. I could just imagine the sheer logistics required to get this campaign off the ground. Please look for it and study it carefully!
Another personal highlight of the evening was John Hegarty of BBH winning the inaugural Lion of St. Mark award for lifetime achievement. I’ve watched and admired his work ever since I came into this business and have met him in a number of occasions. Each time I’ve come away impressed by his combination of charm, insightfulness and focus.
Was Cannes worth attending? Absolutely! Even the infamous Canada Cannes party was worth attending this year. The venue was better and the Canadian camaraderie was palpable.
Will I be attending next year? As a self-confessed lifer in this business I will be back again and again. After all, where else can I talk about great advertising on a beach at midnight watching the most awesome fireworks display, champagne glass in hand, with thousands of other people as passionate and enthusiastic about this crazy business as I am?
Alan Gee is co-founder and chairman of Toronto-based ad agency Blammo.
