Cannes Lions Day 1

      As you all know today was the first day of the festival. After imagining it for so long now, it was so exciting to actually be there and take part in the activities Cannes Lions has to offer. I must say that the HP White Space area in the young lions zone was the perfect way to start out my day.

      I attended five seminars today. Some of which were engaging, while the others left something to be desired. The first of these seminars was goviral. The two speakers, Jimmy Maymann and Martin Lindstrom, discussed the difference between big brand names with lasting impressions and smaller brand names with slightly less recognition. I thought it was interesting to compare Apple and Microsoft with Apple being the clear winner when Microsoft so heavily sponsors the festival. They also stressed the importance of starting offline and then moving online.

      The second seminar of my day was UM, L’Oreal and BMW. I must say that I honestly had no idea what was going on during this seminar. I tried my best to follow what the speakers were saying, but I all went over my head. Most of the time I felt like they didn’t even answer their questions, but instead they took a moment to plug their own brands. However, Joanne Bradford from Demand Media did explain an interesting website called Type F, a beauty and fashion site that can be tailored to each individual user. I fully plan on browsing through this later.

      Out of curiosity I stayed for the IMC Friends with Benefits seminar. Deep down I knew that anything including a Jonas Brother wouldn’t be a significant importance, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. I just had to know what insight Nick Jonas could possibly have to offer the advertising world. I should have skipped that seminar. I felt that the whole thing was simply a tribute to the Jonas Brothers and their fans. I struggled to make the connection between social media marketing of interest to the participants at Cannes Lions and Nick Jonas. Obviously, the Jonas Brothers used social media to market brand themselves, but I don’t know why Nick Jonas had to be there to talk about it. I would have preferred to see their social media marketing strategies rather than hear about how much he loves his fans.

      I was relieved when the Fleishman-Hillard seminar began and it had some depth to it. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dr. Orin Levine explain his mission of vaccinating millions of children in Kenya against pneumonia. It was obvious that this cause is his passion. His desire is to gain insight from the marketing world on how to go about promoting the seriousness of pneumonia if children are left unvaccinated. However, then Mitch Spolan from Living Social started talking and I lost the connection between the two speakers. Not that what he had to say wasn’t interesting, but I didn’t understand why you would switch from discussing humanitarian issues to living social in one seminar. I was really scattered.

      Finally, I have saved the best for last. The networkone seminar was by far the best thing I saw today. The speakers were engaging and interesting. I loved getting to hear from independent agencies that use their freedom to create innovative and entertaining advertising. Each speaker stressed the importance of risk taking. Rob Jack from Special Group said that if it makes you nervous its good. Their advertising isn’t safe and that is exactly why it is good. Ali Ali from Elephant showed their Never Say No to Panda campaign which was quite entertaining. The most important thing that I took away from this seminar is the big agencies are about pleasing the client and small independents are about making great ads. The men from these independent agencies clearly love what they do and are willing to trade profit to gain creative freedom.