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
- 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.
