Dawna Henderson will be prowling the streets of Cannes as a cougar next week, looking for trends, tips and talent to bring back to Canada.
Henderson, president and CEO of digital agency Henderson Bas and a Cyber Lion jurist at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, is spearheading a guerilla campaign called Cougar Seeks Lion that will feed festival news to CougarSeeksLion.com, as well as build her agency’s international profile.
The website is a Twitter page decorated in cougar garb–hot pink leopard print (and for those not in the know, a “cougar” in a less-than-flattering term, refers to a woman over 40 who pursues younger men).
Agency staff will tweet about festival trends, tips, gossip and news to build an audience from international attendees. That potential audience will be steered to the site by T-shirts worn by Henderson and agency staff throughout the Festival.
Other guerilla executions such as stickers and branded condoms will also advertise the URL.
Intertwined with agency tweets will be updates from Kirsten Walkom, manager, marketing and planning, who will be travel-blogging the event for Forbes Online.
Aside from being an info hub, CougarSeeksLion.com is meant to introduce Henderson Bas to young talent from around the world. Henderson has been critical of Canada’s ability to produce post-secondary graduates with the right skills to enter the digital marketing field. As chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, she has begun consulting with universities and colleges, but looking abroad for young talent is in step with her opinions of the current talent pool.
“We’re looking for good talent acquisitions, and where else are you going to find that besides Cannes?” Walkom said. “We’ll be looking at the different award ceremonies for who’s winning and from where.”
Henderson Bas has been considering opening a new office–possibly in New York–for some time. The agency’s 80 staff members currently fill its Toronto office to capacity, and several new client wins (which Walkom could not discuss on the record) have made the case for a new office that much stronger.
The guerilla effort is similar to Henderson Bas’ Colbert Is Dead To Me campaign, a tongue-in-cheek guerilla publicity stunt at this year’s Webby Awards where Colbert, the host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, was given the Person of the Year award. Henderson Bas staff attended the event wearing shirts bearing a URL: ColbertIsDeadToMe.com.
However, because Cannes is a week-long festival of many parts, and not a single event with a set audience, the agency added stickers and condoms to the mix to cover as many available surfaces in Cannes as possible.
“Consistency will be a much more effective driver [to a website] than an event,” said Walkom. “With something like Cannes, we won’t be able to divert their attention for very long.”
