Two of the chicest artistic affairs take place in Cannes: the Cannes Film Festival and the lesser-hyped Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. While the film festival is red-carpet ready and provides a constant source of materials for entertainment news stories, its inspired cousin is an international expo for advertising and marketing professionals with an A-list cast of speakers, presenters, sponsors and exhibitors. If you weren’t able to attend this year, here’s a recap of some of the attendees:
- Anderson Cooper and Anthony Bourdain on how they get their creative inspiration.
- David Copperfield to “explore the tension between authenticity, sincerity, honesty and brand messaging” in a seminar entitled Making Magic: The Art of Illusion in Modern Brand Narrative.
- Google for Adventures in Virtual Reality.
- Mindy Kaling to “discuss how The Mindy Project captured audiences on Hulu and successfully migrated from broadcast television to its new home” in Preserving Great Content with the Right Audience.
- Gwyneth Paltrow for an interview and audience Q&A.
- Will Smith “to discuss his global minded approach to his career and how he combines creative fulfilment with an overall focus on impactful and purpose driven endeavors.”
- Oliver Stone to discuss his views on filmmaking, politics, culture.
- Usher for an intimate interview conducted by Ryan Seacrest.
- Anna Wintour for a bird’s-eye view of the challenges facing creative teams today and the secrets to standing out in the crowd.
Despite the seminars, celebrity sightings and networking opportunities, the main attractions are the awards ceremonies and with a staggering 43,000+ entries, an award here carries great clout in the creative communications community. It’s hard to imagine how the judges are able to view all of the works. And let’s not even talk about how they were able to come up with finalists and winners. Here is one of our favorites from Harvey Nichols department store in the UK. It’s a campaign that received quite a bit of buzz because of its use of real shoplifters caught on security cameras.
What did you think of the campaign?
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