A Canadian agency has developed a mobile app for this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that focuses less on navigating awards galas or sessions and more on the latest gossip circulating the French Riviera.
Cannes Meow was designed within five weeks by FCB/Six (which was recently rebranded from Rivet). It pulls together data from Twitter, online images and other sources and couples them with content curated or created by an in-house team. The results are presented in leaderboards such as “Hangover Hub,” “After Dark” or “Meow,” with catty comments intended to add some humour to the week-long celebration.
Ian Mackenzie, FCB/Six’s executive creative director, told Marketing the app is intended to reflect the firm’s capabilities as well as its overall mission of “bringing humanity” to data.
“We have a vision for the integration of data and technology and how it relates to behaviour change. We want people to know what we’re about,” he said. “It’s a mix of technology and good old fashioned elbow grease.”
FCB/Six has set up a dedicated war room for the project, dubbed “The Litterbox,” where staffers coordinate content that flows through the app with other team members who are on-site at the Cannes Lions. Mackenzie said those who download Cannes Meow could include those attending this year’s event as well as those who are observing from the sideline back here in Canada or elsewhere.
Of course, there’s always a fine line between being funny with an app and potentially offending those taking part in the festival, but Mackenzie said the gossip and other catty comments will remain light-hearted in nature.
“We have the utmost reverence for Cannes and the people who go there,” he said. “I think we’re looking to have fun and be sassy, almost as if you were seeing a text message exchange from friends.”
FCB/Six will be using some promoted posts to drive awareness for Cannes Meow, and will be trying to get attention by offering interesting takes on the statistics around the festival. This could include looking at how a country with solid representation on a particular shortlist “converts” into wins, Mackenzie said.
Given the nature of the app, Mackenzie said the metrics for success might not be as hard and fast as more traditional work. FCB/Six hopes to “add value to the conversation” at the Cannes Lions, he said, though it will look at the number of installs as well.
Cannes Meow is available for both iOS and Android.
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