I didn't go to Cannes this year, but I watched it on Twitter, on YouTube, though emails and in dispatches from colleagues.
You miss the meetings and the networking, but you can still learn lots from afar. It can look like a giant party (too many people post pictures from yachts), but it's great for networking, and Cannes' compact size means that you can arrange lots of meetings in and easily walk between them in 15 minutes.
My issue with the awards - and I suspect that this is a general image problem Cannes has, given the meme above - is that lots of the allegedly effective work seems to have been pretty unknown before someone turned it into an awards case study. Other things were quite widely known, but weren't known to be ads (the VW work below is a classic; I'd seen the video many times but it had never occurred to me that it was an ad, and the car is about the least interesting element. You certainly can't attribute an 11.8% increased in market share to the viral clip. DHOTYA as someone might say. See discussion by me and others surprised to hear that it was an ad here.
But anyway.
There were things I really liked, and here are 3 -
Tampon Book - see top of the post - A campaign that created a book as packaging for tampons, based on the injustice that books are taxed less than sanitary products in Germany, so this packaging would both reduce their price and start a debate about the tax laws.
Distracted Goalkeeper - One of those 'it wouldn't work here' cases where more liberal media laws let brands do crazy things in other countries. Assuming that it is totally genuine, and that the reason the keeper was on this phone before the match didn't leak before the reveal, this was a great idea, and must have been a real shock for football fans.
The Last Ever Issue - Another social impact case study, and another great idea. Men's magazines have generally lost lots of readership and must (mostly) be losing lots of money. It was a great idea to buy one from the publishers (complete with its social feeds) and fill the last ever issue with content promoting equality and respect for women. I don't really buy that this would get the message to men who bought the magazine, as men generally browse before buying and would not have bought that issue, but it was a great stunt, and guaranteed to get lots of press coverage.
Oh - one more - but no video for this one. Monty's Wicket Warning was a piece of work for Foxtel, the Australian pay TV channel. They worked with Google to produce an AI tool that could predict when a wicket was likely to fall in a cricket tournament 5 minutes in advance. They could then produce dynamic ads that they could send to phones and digital screens to get people to switch on. Very clever!
So - lots of good stuff at Cannes, but you need to see lots to find the good stuff.
