Cannes Eye

“Welcome back to the real world”, said a colleague on my return to the office.  Indeed, just a weekend or so later, Cannes Lions 2009  does have a distinctly other-worldly quality.

But it really happened, H&K was really there - we are no longer newbies. So, after our first year in Cannesland, what lessons have we learned?

First, that Cannes Lions does have a very valuable part to play.  The conference theme was ‘ignite your creativity’ and it certainly reinforced for me the critical importance of creativity to getting results .It’s not either/or. Not only agencies believe this. One of the world’s most results-focussed companies, Procter & Gamble, picked up a large number of the top awards.

Second, the fact that ‘ad agencies’ won so many PR Lions should not surprise us. As others have commented, the ad world has had more than 50 years practice to figure out how Cannes works and how to win.  But, also the advertising business has long placed more value on creativity and typically has larger collections of creative people. And, frankly, a good idea is a good idea.

Third, that the rigour of the award process is what makes the Cannes Lions awards special.  Our two panel judges, MaryLee Sachs and Jimmy Tay, saw that first hand and we should all applaud the winners. The PR world should take note that there are genuine awards and then there are personal pension plans - our business has far too much of the latter.

Fourth, that creativity can be crowd-sourced. As Biz Stone said: ” Creativity is a renewable resource” and user generated content made a big impression this year with the Mofilm awards. Big brands using the world’s consumers to create ads to reach the world’s consumers will be a growth business.

Fifth, that while ‘digital’ was much talked about many in the traditional advertising world still haven’t got the social media aspect.  Biz Stone’s seminar drew a packed house at the beginning of the week when many delegates had still to arrive - as many as Eric Schmidt of Google did when the majority were in town -  but hardly a single senior ad executive was there to hear him. So PR companies can feel confident that they have as much right as anyone to give advice to clients on social networks and social communications tools. But it must be informed advice and we have a lot to do.

So, will this be the ‘last post’ for Cannes Lions? Well it is for this year but I hope and believe that we will be back in 2010. We’ll do an assessment and if we go next year, we’ll try to learn more…and maybe win award or two!

Meanwhile, I’d just like to thank  (sob, sob..) my co-bloggers on Cannes Eye, my other hard-working colleagues in Cannes this year, the Cannes Lions organisers, all those people who invited me to parties, to the kind staff at Charley’s Bar and, above all, our seminar guest Biz Stone, who is a complete star and made the whole event.

 A la prochaine.

As we PR consultancy folk continue to fret over the minimal number of PR agency-originted campaigns that either made the short-list or won a PR Lion, let’s not forget that it was our first year in the fray.  And that practised ad agencies have had 55 years to perfect an approach to winning Lions.  Having witnessed Saturday night’s Titanium and Integrated Lions Awards, I’m actually surprised that the PR Jury were not bombarded with a few more campaigns that seemed to have originated in PR thinking but which were not from PR firms.

Should we be flattered that the ad industry has finally decided that PR has come of age, enough to be included in the Lions?  Or perhaps, since their thinking is increasingly holistic - sometimes(!), they deemed PR-originated ideas as more viable in today’s challenging market?

Never fear though.  There are many ad agencies who still don’t get it; who still do not understand that PR is more than just a theme or slogan; and who still don’t understand that PR is a two-way conversation which aims to build relationships, harness influence and generally ‘participate’ with its audiences.

That bodes well for 2010, but it’s incumbent on all 2009 PR Jury members to spread the word across their countries and parent groups if applicable.  We only had 431 entries, and although the submissions came from 48 countries, some markets were under-represented given the size of the PR business in those countries - namely the UK with 55 entries and the US with just 46.  Some countries like India and China were hardly present.  Learly there’s a job to be done in promoting the Cannes PR Lions as the pre-eminent global awards for the PR profession alongside the others.  More PR consultancies and their clients should actively participate in 2010, and perhaps we should even think about spreading our wings into other categories.  Sagami Industries’ Love Distance campaign, a PR Lion, also won a Film Gold Lion, and The Great Schlep, also a PR Lion, won Titanium.  And there were other examples of multiple Lions for other PR Lions earlier in the week.

I look forward to 2010 when hopefully the PR profession takes the Cannes Lions just as seriously as the 2009 PR Jury did.  And I hope to see you there - Cannes Lions Festival on 20-26 June, 2010.

Whilst at the Cannes Lions, we managed to catch a few minutes with some of the great and good of the advertising, PR and online industries.

Here’s Jeffrey Merrihue of Accenture talking about how PR can make itself more relevant and why MOFILM is at Cannes.

Whilst at the Cannes Lions, we managed to catch a few minutes with some of the great and good of the advertising, PR and online industries.

Here’s HP’s Michael Mendenhall explaining the impact of social media on traditional communications and creativity.

Whilst at the Cannes Lions, we managed to catch a few minutes with some of the great and good of the advertising, PR and online industries.

Here’s our parent company WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell on why it’s taken so long for PR to be recognised at Cannes.

Whilst at the Cannes Lions, we managed to catch a few minutes with some of the great and good of the advertising, PR and online industries.

First up, this interview with Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone on what brings him to Cannes.

It had to be.  A group of very senior CMOs from very big brands moderated by Sir Martin Sorrell on how brands are coping in the current economic downturn.  Joining the panel were Mary Dillon of McDonald’s, Marc Pritchard of P&G, Brian Perkins of J&J, and Mary Beth West of Kraft.  Another sell-out session as agency types listened to what influential client types had to say.

Key topics included the use of digital versus traditional media, especially TV; creativity; and client-agency partnership and “pain points”.

While mass media like TV is still playing an important role, everyone reported increases in digital, but percentages varied between geographies.  Mary Dillon said McDonald’s spends roughly 7% of its global marketing budget on digital, whereas J&J, P&G and Kraft all reported double-digit percentages.  Still, McDonald’s is one of the few brands growing market share in the current environment, but they are rethinking the marketing mix constantly. 

Marc Pritchard reported P&G’s advertising budget down by 4%, but he encouragingly said that the recession had provided the opportunity to “step back and hit the re-set button”.  He was the only CMO on the panel to mention the widest possible range of marketing disciplines, including PR which he mentioned twice.  I was counting.  He also mentioned the Ariel coldwater campaign on which H&K was a key partner in the UK.

Marc also talked about the BAL (Brand Agency Leadership) structure that P&G is adopting as a way to better integrate ideas on brand building.  P&G brands accounting for 50% of sales have moved to BFLs (Brand Franchise Leaders) internally, and one-third of the business have adopted BALs.  In fact, all of the CMOs talked of the struggle to truly integrate creativity.  Brian Perkins of J&J talked about investing in communications planning, and transferring great ideas in the best possible way through evangelists - looking for the sum to be greater than the individual parts.

Are smaller agencies better equipped to come up with the big ideas?  Not necessarily, according to Mary Beth West of Kraft, but a productive nimbleness seems to be emerging, and at the end of the day, it all comes down to the people who can solve the problems.  Mary Dillon of McDonald’s believes that sometimes size matters.  McDonald’s has some great global ad agencies, but it also is a highly decentralised company so they also partner with smaller firms.

One common expectation is that creativity should be borne from insights, and Mary Beth West of Kraft went further to say that the thinking should go beyond insights to the interpretation of the insights.  Mary Beth went on to say that she’s seeing media agencies as more of the problem solvers in this new world.  Worrying, she also said that in her view, clients are in front of the agencies, and consumers are way in front of both.

Now there’s an argument for Full Participation Marketing if there ever was one!

Search also came up as a solution, but it’s not at the top of the list for either Kraft or J&J.

And a panel of marketers just wouldn’t be right without getting into the area of sustainability.  Mary Dillon felt that without question, the consumer is expecting sustainability from their brands.  And in the case of this panel, every brand is already very active on this front.  Kraft just announced a $90 million partnership with the Gates Foundation.

Martin’s parting question was a crunchy one:  What things drive you nuts about your agencies?  There was a bit of squirming by all, but Mary Beth summed it up best by saying that it all comes down to relationships, and then she went on to add that she’s had the best conversations with new agencies here in Cannes than she’s had with her current agencies in the past 6 months.  Ouch!  And a good reason to come to Cannes?

For a slew of reasons that I shall not even attempt to go into, Day 5 was pretty much restricted to recovery from Day 4 festivities and meetings with the team on what we’ve learned from our participation in Cannes, our collaboration with Twitter, our blogging and live-tweeting, our networking, and general miscellany.

That said, there was one session I had no intention of missing: and that was DDB Worldwide hosting David Plouffe, campaign manager for Barack Obama, who inspired the packed crowd with his recollections of what worked and what didn’t, what’s changed and what agencies and clients should be thinking about as they seek to harness social media for their campaigns.

Memorable thoughts from Plouffe:

• Debates are no longer happening in DC only, the grassroots is now empowered to participate - and will expect to be able to participate
• In today’s world, real change will happen when Americans at grassroots level demand it, thereby creating an obligation to keep in touch, directly with those audiences
• On memorable viral videos such as the Great Schlep and Will.I.am’s mash-up of an Obama speech, these  happened outside the campaign, people doing this on their own. if virals had come out as Obama product, there would unquestionably have been given far less credibility 
• For all that is said about the power of social media, the big drivers of the campaign were old-school - email and web married with local grassroots activity    
• Of course, in the same way we advocate for compelling content as the foundation for any campaign, so too did Plouffe suggest that none of this would have mattered without a spectacular candidate
• With 10 million registered, OBama can now send out a message via email and reach a larger audience than the major brodcast messages - and do so in a way that the message can be shared - individual to individual
• Video became a vital element of the campaign to give a voice and to communicate directly on the issues - nothing more valuable that a human being talking to a human being
• Campaign alignment was essential - meaning, focusing all communications on a single idea or theme, issue or location. If not, multiple voices and multiple messages will only confuse.
• Grassroots and digital was married… had to make people want to own campaign… vs soundbites and media 

Roger Daltrey’s battle cry apparently was to resist the usual, a worthy notion especially at a festival designed to celebrate creativity. His seminar at Cannes on Thursday was facilitated by none other than Harvey Goldsmith, and sponsored by Y&R. Entertaining as it was - particularly when Daltrey broke out his guitar and proceeded to entertain us with two solos - the auditorium was not nearly as full as it was for our own Biz Stone sesh earlier in the week. Sign of the times? Or too sunny outside?

Note to self: never sit in front row of Debussy auditorium again. Cannot see people seated for panel beyond the giant teleprompters. But boy did I get some cracking good pix of Daltrey when he stood at the edge of the stage for his performances. What a treat!

Not a terribly instructive sesh for the advertising and marketing crowd, but Daltrey did predict that vinyl will be the biggest thing in music in 10 years’ time, and the message about daring to be different came across loud and clear, although I suspect I’ll have to find another route to throwing tellies out of hotel windows and smashing up guitars.

On a completely different subject, I found the New Directors’ Showcase to be a fab source of creative ideas (except for the zombie-eating-zombie Colin - provocative horror for provocative horror’s sake?!). In particular, loved Ben Steiger Levine’s music video from Montreal with his amazing use of bees, and Oren Lavie & Yuval and Merav Nathan’s music video from Marina del Rey with the entire story line on the backdrop of a bed. So very clever!!

Day four was perhaps the best to date in terms of the quality and diversity of sessions in Cannes. It included a discussion with musician and actor Steven Van Zandt  and Grey Group’s Tim Mellors on the changing role of music and marketing, and what it means for artists and the music industry. Even better it ended with a performance from the Cocktail Slippers, a band represented by Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool label. Of the many interesting soundbites from that discussion, the most interesting (from my perspective) was Van Zandt claiming that he often found better music on TV commercials than on radio… and that he envisioned a new kind of partnership emerging between brands and musicians.

Introduced as a ‘battle of the sexes, now in cyberspace’, Andrew Robertson of BBDO entertained the crowd with a slew of fascinating and (in some cases) humorous statistics on the online behaviours and expectations of men and women. Key findings:

• Men are about destinations, women are about journeys    
• Men interested in fantasy women interested in reality - 84% of virtual reality game players are men
• To reach women… don’t add messages, MAKE FRIENDS
• Women like to use the net to listen, to empathize, to learn and to find a voice 
• 56% of women think life would be impossible if they couldn’t use the web to keep touch with family friends

Other miscelany: 

• For 25% of women, blogs have reduced time spent reading magazines     
• 40% of men feel more attractive online    
• Women were more than twice as likely as men to be photographed with friends in their FB profile than men    
• 63% of Facebook users are women, 36% are men… (1% undecided)   
• 70% of men would not know how to entertain themselves without the Internet
• 73% of french men are convinced that women can’t keep a secret when they’re online

Leo Burnett and Contagious had a rousing session on Wildfire stories and the elements that make stories relevant and memorable such that the word spreads faster (online and off). You can read more about that session here.

Finally, Hewlett-Packard CMO Mike Mendenhall took the stage with R/GA to talk about marketing in the age of cloud computing. His premise was that consumers have already adopted many elements of the ‘cloud’ through their use of sites such as YouTube and Flickr, and their ability to store and access virtually any content - images, video, and songs - from any device. What does this mean for marketers: in essence, it means moving from a ‘one to many’ model to a ‘many to many’ model in ways that harness virtually unlimited data, and the people who are accessing and sharing it. Key benefits of the cloud: it’s easy, it’s accessible, it’s social… and, in many cases, it’s free.