I want to preface this entry on a personal note, rather than adding it at the end, by way of explaining my reactions to everything I’ve seen today. At various stages of my life I’ve wanted to “be” everything from a WNBA player (no I’ve never played basketball) to a veterinarian to a writer to a lawyer, and lots of other things in between. Ten months ago I wanted to get my doctorate and teach Comparative Literature. Advertising is, then, a very recent interest for me. I wanted to go on this particular study abroad trip to get a taste of advertising, in an experiential and academic fashion, before I commit to a job in this field in the fall. And I believe today I may have fallen in love with the entire communications industry. This is the first year that Cannes Lions has been billed as a Festival of Creativity rather than strictly an Advertising Festival, and I can see why – the entire Palais was covered floor-to-ceiling with amazing design, and there were young, hip, stylish people walking around everywhere. I think the rest of this festival is going to be my honeymoon phase with advertising and I’m so looking forward to it. Everything I see here I’m translating to job opportunities with awesome companies and possibilities for a relevant and interesting career in general. That being said, excuse me for sounding overeager.
This morning’s first seminar was presented by goviral and was all about what they termed “The Long Idea” – brands maintaining long-term conversations with consumers and, basically, forming an emotional and deep-rooted connection with them. Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology, presented some research he’d been involved in that linked brand loyalty to religion, which I thought was really interesting but also pretty messed up. The most powerful brands, those with really strong images, sounds, and ideas tied to them (think: Apple, VW) activate the same regions in our brain as powerful religions do. Of course, people don’t talk about brands the same way they talk about religion. The example he cited was a study in which most people responded verbally the same way about both Microsoft and Apple, but their neurological reactions were much stronger to Apple, due to their stronger, ritualistic and more emotion-based branding. Lindstrom called this “smashable” branding, based on an anecdote from Coke in the early 20th century. When Coke redesigned their glass bottles in 1919, they wanted to create a bottle that, even if it fell on the floor and was smashed into lots of little glass pieces, you could still pick up a shard of and tell that it was a Coke bottle. Brands achieve this by creating a certain something that just can’t be disassociated from their product, like the Jaws theme song, which virtually everyone in the room recognized after just two notes. Letting consumers “feel” a brand in this way, form an indelible connection to it, is much more effective than simply telling them about the brand. Also, Lindstrom talked about how branding during a casual conversation, as in word-of-mouth recommendations, is more effective than simply putting your brand out there on the Internet, even if you have really awesome Internet content. The idea is for a brand to move from offline to online, not the other way around. To be totally honest I have issues with a lot of these concepts – is it socially responsible to try and make a consumer “feel” a brand? Obviously it’s doable, but do we, as a people, want to feel an emotional connection to a product in the same way we feel an emotional connection to our religion? I mean, ultimately, is making a sale that important? From a client’s standpoint I suppose the answer is yes, but I just don’t know if I like this kind of psychological toying-around.
After the first seminar we had a short meeting with Susan Lilley of USA Today, the official US representative at Cannes Lions. She helps out all of the American delegates here and gave us some good info and recommendations for the festival. Then it was on to another seminar, this one presented by WGSN about consumer insights that are currently driving creativity. Susanna Kempe, CEO of WGSN, talked about how 2012 is predicted to be a year all about “the triumph of beauty.” Going even further into the future, 2013 will supposedly be all about “Eco Hedonism,” “Radical Neutrality,” and “Hyperculture.” The seminar was interesting but all I really got out of it was a long list of buzzwords that don’t have a whole lot of meaning on their own. I understand the concepts at play here – consumers want sustainability to be easier and more pleasurable, a shift back to simplicity in our products and services, and the creation of cultural harmony. But the vocabulary of all this just seemed silly and self-important. As an example, Kempe described eco hedonism as “crafting a post-natural luxury and engineering the mystical.” Really? One of the panelists, Bruno Schwobthaler of Warner Bros, had some interesting things to say about how their licensed superheroes have been put to work to support green initiatives lately, though. You see all kinds of eco awareness ads featuring some sort of Superman imagery, and I realized as he was talking that I have seen lots of ads like that, I just hadn’t really paid attention. He said one thing that really stuck with me: society has developed a need to associate a superhero with every problem of the day, which is why their superheroes have so much brand elasticity. This idea of society needing a hero resonated with a lot of the things I’ve concerned myself with in literature, so it was cool to see this kind of crossover of ideas.
Next up was probably my favorite seminar of the day, presented by UM, L’Oreal & BMW titled “Entrepreneurs are the New Creative Department.” It was my favorite because it highlighted just how little I know about the various outlets of creativity in communications, and I had the opportunity to learn a lot of basic stuff from this talk. I’ve been unsure of the distinctions between marketing, branding, advertising, and media, and as it turns out most of the industry seems to be unsure of these distinctions as well. The two media companies present, Demand Media and Say Media, kept talking about the content they’ve produced in conjunction with their clients, and I realized that, if that’s the case, what does the advertising agency do? If the media company is responsible for content production and release and they work directly with the client, what role does an ad agency have left to play? I suppose for someone who’s been in the industry for a long time these questions would be pretty scary, but for a newcomer, it’s really exciting to see the new ways in which people are using technology to drive communications and advertising. It seems very logical to me that media planning and content production should be conceived in the same breath, and that a fully integrated campaign shouldn’t be broken up between various agencies doing various things. I guess that means I’m a fan of synergy… Jack Donaghy would love me.
I’ll try to summarize the last two seminars of the day a little more briefly than the earlier ones. Fleishman Hillard presented a really cool seminar about social mobile marketing, featuring Dr. Orin Levine of the non-profit IVAC, an organization dedicated to providing pneumonia vaccines to children in Kenya and other third-world countries, and Mitch Spolan of LivingSocial. As an iPhone junkie I’m fascinated by all the possibilities mobile opens up, and I just get all warm and fuzzy when I find a new app that really does make my life easier or put some fun into my day. It was refreshing, too, to see these technologies applied to enact some positive change in the world. I definitely reacted a lot better to IVAC’s mission than I did to the idea of eco hedonism, and it got me thinking, maybe I’d like to work in nonprofit advertising or public relations rather than just advertising to create brand loyalty and corporate gain. The last seminar of the day was presented by Naked, a London creative agency I read about in Adland, about the 3 C’s of modern creativity: community, crowdsourcing and co-creation. Again, lots of buzzwords without a whole lot of meaning. All three of their C’s just seemed like the same idea to me, but perhaps that’s because I’ve never worked in the industry and can’t tell the little nuances you’d run into in a working scenario apart from each other. Lego and Nokia both had panelists present and they showed some sweet videos – people are so creative with Legos! Other than that, though, I can’t say I gained much from the final seminar.
One more thing I want to mention: the Young Lions Zone. There is a free YouTube smoothie bar, a huge screen that constantly shows all the new tweets with various Cannes Lions hashtags, the HP White Space where everything is white and there are sharpies all around to draw all over everything with, and free WiFi (although the WiFi runs all throughout the Palais). So many awesome companies are present at the festival giving away free stuff and setting up cool booths and whatnot, and the Young Lions Zone is such a great place for us to hang out. I feel like I’m getting VIP treatment at the festival or something. Did I mention there is also free Red Bull, Vitamin Water, Coke Zero, ice cream, and I heard a rumor about some free espresso somewhere today… it’s grand. Tomorrow is going to be even busier than today but I’ll try to make my next post a bit less wordy. What Cannes I say? I’m just so excited to be here.
No comments:
Post a Comment