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.

So the folks from Contagious and Leo Burnett had a session today on "wildfire stories" - the art of creating immersive narratives  with a "pass on" factor.  Who knew it was as simple as just choosing from seven basic plots which are common themes in literature?!  That the advertising world is as simple as seven basic ad formats?!   Somehow, I don't see PR in such simplicity, thankfully.  And here they are folks:

1.       Comedy – case study: comparethemarket.com in the UK supported by rich Russian meerkat Aleksander Orlov.  Cute critter campaign with Orlov stacking up over 4,000 friends on Facebook and another 16,000 on Twitter. 

2.       Tragedy – case study: promote the Dark Knight from Bat Man, an alternate reality game that created a 360-degree experience in the US via street marketing, digital, stunts, live events & more.  The campaign engaged more than 10 million participants.

3.       Overcoming the Monster – case study:  help Doritos conquer the relatively new Argentine market by resurrecting the slow dance, helping Argentinean youths to get closer to the object of their desire.  This campaign created the largest flash mob in LatAm.

4.       Voyage & Return – case study:  Sagami Condoms 0.02mm in Japan where condom advertising is outlawed.  A real couple in a long-distance relationship was recruited to demonstrate "Love Long Distance" by participating in a 1 billion-metre marathon to meet each other, supported by blogs, SMS, video chats, live streaming, etc., and resulted in a 125% increase in sales versus the previous year.

5.       Quest – case study:  adidas South Africa 2010 integrated campaign leveraging ”Every Team Needs” as its guiding principle

6.       Rags to Riches – case study:  James Ready Beer in Canada engaged consumers in an ongoing cause to keep the price of their beer to a buck by offering to share 100 billboards with JR’s loyal fans - a great example taking user-generated content to a new level.

7.       Rebirth – case study:  reinvigorate Yellow by creating reappraisal.  This New Zealand campaign centred around building a real restaurant 10 metres high in a tree with all suppliers found in Yellow.  Job done with a 10% leap in unprompted recall of Yellow, supported by a ripple effect through PR.  And the restaurant was fully-booked with 2,000 people alone in the first month.

Great stories; great cases.  I just don't think it's all that simple! 

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 proved worthy of the Festival's reputation (with one being nothing but a sales pitch), a few nuggets emerged that offered some insights into the thinking of agencies and marketers in today's uncertain and rapidly evolving business climate.

In talking of the "Death of the Creative Director", LBi's Chris Clarke and Lorenzo Wood captured the re-newed focus on the need for compelling content, compelling stories and awesome creative if one is to capture attention in a world where attention is at a premium: "Do something interesting if you want to say something interesting", they posited. "(It's) not enough to be clever... you need to be clever with impact." . Instead of defining the experience, brands today must create spaces where consumers can interact and create, and then identify opportunities to intervene in ways that add value. All of this was positioned in the context of the social media (r)evolution and the oft-stated fact that individuals are now both consumers and producers of content.

Further down the docket, Sapient moderated a discussion with members of the Coca-Cola team talking about how interactive technologies are transforming their campaigns. Carol Kruse, VP Interactive Marketing, discussed the challenges of running global digital campaigns and their success in taking ownership of, and transforming, their fan-founded Facebook page which now counts 3 million-plus fans. Perhaps the most interesting point raised was the shared consensus of all panelists that mobile will be the next 'big' thing for marketing - particularly in emerging markets where, Kruse stated, Coke has in fact bypassed the web and gone straight to mobile.

With the addition of Richard Rosen's discussion on the convergence of brand and direct marketing, and a reinforcement of the power and potential of social media to enhance both personal and corporate brands from the good folks at LinkedIn (more on that later), the day - which began in a booze and jet-lag fuelled haze - ended up quite enlightening.

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 the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.

Without question, the social web is a toxic place - often filled with vitriol and hate and the desire of a vocal few to knee-cap anything and anyone attempting to elevate the conversation (or at least keep it civil). And it's often why marketers are afraid to play in this space. Which would be wrong. As wrong as it is to attempt to jump in with no understanding of the "rules" and "customs" of the communities they are seeking to target and engage.  

In the social web, it's not only the brands that need to be thick-skinned, it's the people behind the brands, or those that represent them. Are they prepared for what they might face? And are rules in place to ensure they know how to respond - whether to silence the attacks that are flung at them without merit, to walk away, or - and dare it be said - to fight back.

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 - particularly her citation of Bob Greenberg of R/GA in Art & Commerce: Funnel Clouding:

... Real engagement requires entirely new teams of people—like information architects, data analysts and an army of technologists of various stripes. The traditional teams found at agencies simply do not possess the skill sets needed to tackle areas that are deeper inside the funnel, where purchase decisions increasingly take place.

She complements this by suggesting:

You get flashy, glossy microsites because you’re dealing with an industry of advertisers and publishers that haven’t had a chance to develop and assimilate a new set of values.

While we may be coming at this from slightly different tangents, the point itself is valid. As consumer expectations change with respect to interaction, transparency, and as they look for ways to engage more meaningfully with brands, new types of expertise will be required at the table - to drive forward the opportunities as well as to manage the risks. Moreover, and where this debate seems to end at the purchase decision, increasingly brands must now consider what happens post-purchase - to encourage evangelism, to address issues, to build community and loyalty, and to deliver a "sustained" brand experience.

If advertisers can't do it. Who will?

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 one without a clear black or white answer.

It's important because, as another colleague recently posited when discussing a communications campaign of one of the "big 3" automakers: the aspiration should be a symphonic approach - meaning, one that unites all of the instruments of communication - advertising and PR, digital and social - in such a way that the collective impact is significantly greater than the impact of each individual discipline.  And that's the crux, at least from the perspective of this blogger. Which begs the real questions: Who will conduct such a symphony? Who will bring to bear the best and most relevant elements of each discipline and channel in a way that addresses the new realities and expectations that define the current communications environment? In many areas - social media being just one - disciplines are already overlapping. And as new imperatives emerge - transparency, engagement and interactivity, authenticity, and "brand experience" - and as we re-think age-old imperatives around story-telling and word-of-mouth, so too are agencies being challenged to think beyond the box that defines their core competencies, to re-think how experiences are defined, messages communicated, and conversations created and sustained. In the not-to-distant future, and as we are all forced to play in an increasingly 'grey' space, will we even be able to judge the real impact of a campaign when viewed from the perspective of a single discipline?

Representing a company with a number of campaigns in contention at this year's show, perhaps I'm not one to speak.  And yet I wonder if an award celebrating an individual discipline will very soon be akin to celebrating the work of a single violinist at the expense of all the other players in the orchestra.