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 [...]
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Day 5 @ the Festival - Obamamania!
Day 4 @ the Festival
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 [...]
Day 3 @ the Festival
Clearly the most interesting session that I’ve seen to date was the Dark Knight case study presented by 42 Entertainment. A monster campaign on steroids, it demonstrated the potential to create powerful brand interactions through what they define as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). Through the case study, Susan Bonds and Alex Lieu recounted how the campaign combined both offline [...]
Day 2 @ the Festival
I have a headache. I am surely dehydrated. And I am broke. The perils of Cannes. And we are only on Day 3. Standout moments from day two? Clearly, H&K’s chat with Biz Stone in front of the largest and most energized audience I’ve yet seen, showed the extraordinary level of attention being given by agencies and [...]
Biz Stone answers questions on Cannes TV
Given the enormous visibility and exposure of Twitter in recent months, H&K was delighted to be able to sponsor a Cannes Festival Tweetup featuring none other than Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. This morning, Biz was interviewed for Cannes TV and offered up some useful insights into why Twitter has suddenly become as popular as it has, and glimpses [...]
Day 1 @ the Festival
On a day when the last thing anyone wanted to do was sit in an auditorium – with sunny skies and beach beckoning – the opening sessions largely reflected the day and condition of most delegates – many who were either jet lagged or in Saturday night recovery mode. And yet, while not all sessions [...]
Can brands (re)gain the high ground?
Much like Dell on the day it launched its first corporate blog to a cacophony of the ‘righeous’, Skittles faced off against the wrath of the (m)asses and (barely) endured. Trent Reznor, on the other hand, is calling it quits. And can you blame him?
I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of [...]
Perspectives on Canadian Twitter use... or are they?
So according to a recent Ipsos Reid study, “ONLY” about one out of every 100 Canadians is using Twitter (which apparently translates to “ONLY” 1.45 per cent of the Internet population in Canada). Is it ONLY me, or am I reading too heavily into the implied message here?
Granted, my Cannes colleague Niall recently blogged about several other studies [...]
Going beyond "awareness"
The always thought-provoking Karen McGrane argued recently why “Web ads suck”, She cites a litany of usual suspects: lack of investment compared to other channels, questionable measurement, size and technical constraints and, most interestingly from my perspective, the fact that advertising should be “about more than awareness”. As a career PR professional, this last point caught my attention – [...]
Advertising and PR - "Play the music, not the instrument"
In this blog’s inaugural post, my colleague Tony asks the question ”Does the involvement of PR signal a fundamental shift away from ad agencies?” It’s a question that has been debated ad nauseum throughout the blogosphere for years with no clear resolution and with responses, for the most part, clouded by obvious self-interest. But it’s an important question – albeit [...]