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Surviving Cannes

A mix between the Euro song competition and Big brother, Cannes is a strange affair. Like any conference, time stands still here. Normal societal and socially acceptable behaviour goes out the window. And people who you would normally cross the road to avoid become like family for the week. So in attempt to give meaning to the experience, here’s a survival guide to the industry’s most surreal event.

First of all it is expensive. In fact it is stupidly expensive. Buying a house in Sydney is cheaper than a hotel room in Cannes. As long as you’re not paying though, you’re unlikely to have suffer a room the size of postage stamp. I sadly am one of the few who is paying however, so Chateau Faulty Towers it is for me. Fortunately, I have not broken my Multinational connections completely however. The Networks know how to put on a good party at Cannes and invites are scarce so it helps to know some one.

Then there’s the delegates. If Cannes was your only view of the advertising industry you would think it comprised entirely of rather overweight, balding men in their late fifties and beautiful young thin and twenty something women, who seemingly know nothing about advertising at all. No global credit crisis here.

One cannot go to Cannes without mentioning the service, or the abhorrent lack thereof. It is a misnomer that if you give your best French a crack, the locals will applaud your best effort. You could pronounce the wine correctly, have had a hand in crushing the very grapes and even married the vigneron’s daughter and still the sommelier will feign complete misunderstanding until you point to the bottle on the list so that he can pronounce it properly for you.

Whilst on the subject, there are a few institutions in Cannes worthy of note. The terrace is the more sedate, post seminar drinking spot where business gets done, careers are made and journalists get cozy with the year’s darlings of the festival The Gutter bar is so called because it’s that busy you find yourself ensconced on the footpath and in the gutter. This crowd is a mixture of advertising’s finest and creative slash ‘Rockstars’, but the motto is the same and that is clearly to get as hammered as possible on the corporate expense account. For some this almost as much as they will see of Cannes.

For me, Cannes is about spending a week surrounded by some of the most engaging and bold ideas that have been crafted to as close as advertising will ever get to perfection. The seminars and film showings are well attended. And while the insufferable whistling of displeasure by the European contingent brings the tone down, after you have seen the twentieth version of another non-sensical Japanese green tea TVC it’s hard not to join in.

Of course, Cannes is not just for creatives and people with Global EVP on their business card. More and more clients are attending and this is set to continue to grow, as it should. Cannes expands the mind and instils the belief that truly great advertising is not only possible, but can make a difference to a business and brand.

So forget the family holiday, sell the dog, cash in your super and come to Cannes. It is truly a worthy and eye-opening experience.

Ash’s Top 10 tips to surviving Cannes

1. Bring cash
2. Bring more cash
3. Stay away from women with a five o’clock shadow
4. Plan your week around the seminars
5. Wear a Groucho mask for your ID, so you can transfer it
6. Bring loads of business cards
7. Beware that the sun burns in the South of France too
8. Try your best French, but prepare to be humiliated
9. No one will take a 100 euro (on account of the number of fakes)
10. The Casino is best avoided, but if you must go, take your passport

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 1

Sunday in Cannes. Day 1.

Cannes on day one is like a duck: all the action is happening out of sight. While delegates are still arriving, and people are finding their bearings, the judges are working their collective arses off trying to figure out what's going to make the cut.

Spoke to one of the Promo judges (Ben Coulson, George Patterson Y&R Mebourne) who said he was gobsmacked by the quality of the work they were judging. Promo has quickly become one of THE categories at Cannes, and it's sounding like the winning stuff is going to be pretty special.

Also caught up with Justin and Iggy, who are Australia's reps in the Young Lions Print competition for the second year running. Good effort, that. They'll be finished later tonight, and here's hoping they can go one better and bring home the gold. But can someone please airfreight them a couple of blue wife-beater singlets or a Ricky Ponting cricket top or something? They look like they're representing South America. Won't do them any harm at the parties, though.

Some good news for those stuck back home: the weather is a bit sucky this year. And the free t-shirt you get is possibly the most tasteless piece of clothing ever devised. It's so bad that not even the Latvian contingent seems to be wearing them.

Most of the heavy hitters don't seem to fly in until midweek, so at the moment the fat bald rich guys are outnumbered by young, enthusiastic creative types about 50:1. It's a good vibe, full of hope and passion. And because the shortlists haven't been announced yet, no-one's bitter and twisted about getting shafted by the judges. That'll come tomorrow.

This year's theme is "Big Ideas can make anyone feel small". Which would be good, except this exact idea was done for CB's The Work a couple of years ago. Much better too. You'd think they'd check this sort of thing, no?

That's about it for today. But I'll leave you with one thought: if you decide to fly on Friday the 13th, bad things will happen to you. Bad things like your plane deciding not to work on the runway at Rome... with no available flights for two days... which means you'll have to bus it all the way from Rome to Nice... which is 9 hours... in a fucking bus...

But every cloud has a silver lining. Watching a family of 1st Class-travelling prima-donnas cracking the absolute sads at having to travel on a BUS with smelly poor folk was almost worth it.

Almost.

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 2

Monday’s the day that Snoop came close to scoring the Grand Prix, but instead had to settle for the still-rather-impressive euro-bling that is a gold lion. It’s also the day that print, outdoor and promo shortlists go up on the wall, and there are some very definite trends.

Trend One: Bubble gum is the new product-of-choice for award-hungry agencies. In particular vogue is the "giant pink bubble device" which has been shortlisted across various countries in various guises. There’s the bubble so huge, it acts as an airbag on a child’s pedal car. The bubble so huge, it envelopes a girl on a swing. The bubble so huge, it brings down an aircraft. And my personal favourite: the bubble so huge, it pops out of the page in a 3D pop-up-book effect.

That one was from Brazil and while the cynic in me says there’s a fair chance it probably didn’t exactly sort of kinda actually run . . . it certainly stands out from the crowd, both literally and figuratively.

Trend Two: Promo is where it’s all happening. While it’s great looking at the world’s best print and outdoor, I can’t help but think that the real creativity in our industry is being applied to the Promo category. A perfectly executed print ad is one thing, but Promo brings you landmines in kindergarten sandpits, a multimedia campaign for the tiny Smart car, executed entirely in a German miniature-world themepark, transported pubs, the storytelling brilliance of Snoop, and a whole heap of amazing stuff that’s just so much better than a single execution in any particular medium.

Trend Three: like professional sportspeople, ad-folk are getting cleverer and cleverer at "bending" the rules when it comes to creating work for award shows. Just because you don’t see ads for dog training schools and lingerie shops much anymore, doesn’t mean that Cannes isn’t liberally sprinkled with scams. These days, they just dress up like real ads.

Met some girls from Toronto last night and I think I insulted them by suggesting that if they didn’t want to be mistaken for Americans all the time, maybe they could adopt an accent that didn’t sound so American. I think that was the beer talking.

Watched the alcoholic drinks screenings today. From Oz, Pure Blonde got a lot of laughs and applause . . . the audience seemed to like the Coopers Geisha spot quite a bit . . . but overall, the category was a bit flat. Even the reliable brands like Bud Lite were a bit disappointing.

Going to a restaurant tonight that has apparently been heavily inspired by the 1960s cult sci-fi soft-porn classic, Barbarella. Yeah, I don’t know about that one either. But this is, after all, Cannes. And besides, some things are so wrong, they’re undeniably right.

From the judging room

Outstanding work is not naturally or easily created. If it was, we would see more of it on display at Cannes.

Cannes celebrates creativity. Creativity is one of the elements needed in outstanding media but it is not enough on its own.

Nearly half of the 2000 media entries emanated from creative agencies. That is because they are able to operate at this single or mono level of media effectiveness. The award entry needs to demonstrate the cleverness or latitude of the idea. That's it! I saw many of these from around the world and from Australia. They are clever, but they are not outstanding media.

Awards do not yet have the currency with media agencies that they do with creative agencies. It's the legacy of six decades over just one. We need to think in terms of merchandising our work and one way of doing this is making people look at it and judges its worthiness.

And finally, we have the knowledge and the skills to put in a good award entry. We need to apply ouselves to doing this. Too many entries did not do justice to their work through inadequate info.

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 3

SMART's John Mescall enlists the help of fellow bloggers for Day 3's installment from Cannes

Just so you don't get sick of me, I figured I'd bring in a few guest bloggers. So, sitting by the pool at the Patts/Y&R villa (they have a pool, a sauna and a spa - so everyone in Cannes should drop on by), enjoy the contributions of SMARTARSE'S GUEST BLOGGERS.

Jim Ingrams, GPY&R:
"What can I say about Cannes? Well, last night I spend a considerable amount of time chatting to a large black woman in a small fluorescent pink dress. She was lovely. I asked her if she was a copywriter or an art director. It turns out she was a prostitute. I awarded her Best Use of Lycra - non traditional. Oh, and don't let anyone from upper-middle-management at Patts read this, they think I'm here to attend seminars."

Ben Couzens, GPY&R:
"My time in Cannes so far has been taken up with trying to attend as many seminars on new non traditional ambient branded content used in an integrated way. Ben Coulson has also shot me in the left ball with an air gun."

Ben Coulson, GPY&R:
Ben refused to contribute to the blog, on the grounds that anything he said in his current state would most likely incriminate him beyond all measure.

Richard Muntz, JWT
Yes, Cannes is on the Cote D'Azur. Yes, Cannes is the world's conference centre. Yes, Cannes is home to some of the world's biggest boats. But Cannes is also a giant Euro retirement village. I drew the curtains in my hotel room on day 2 of my Cannes experience to see a heavy-set, negligee-clad Frenchwoman in her 70s bending over sweeping her balcony. This is not the view of Cannes they include in the travel brochures. Sadly, it will forever be etched onto my hard-drive.

Whoah. Thanks for that Richard. Personally, I'd like to remember today as the day I spent two hours in the Berlin School of Creative Leadership workshop, getting lectured by two German mad Professors on the art of leading creative people into battle. Apparently, they'll give you all the tools you need (including an MBA in Creative Leadership) for only 65,000 Euro. Personally, I'd buy an Aston Martin. But hey.

John Mescall is executive creative director of SMART

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 4

You know those nights when you tell yourself you’ll be a bit sensible and just have a few drinks and not do anything too stupid and then you have a million drinks and do a bunch of stupid things that only come to light once you check the contents of your camera the next morning?

That was the story of the opening gala last night. I blame the fact that they were serving beer into morbidly oversized super-slurpee mega-cups, rather than any lack of self-control.

The gala party itself was pretty good, and I’ll forever be indebted to the festival organisers for giving me a little insight into the lives of women: namely what it’s like to queue 10 minutes for the toilet. As a man, I’m used to going straight into the gents whenever I feel like it, usually sparing a pitying glance at the huge queue for the ladies. But when you combine six urinals, 2000 men and half-litre cups of beer, you get a whole hell of a lot of leg-crossing going on. So thanks for that.

On the walls today, I noticed what I thought was an extinct species at award shows: the "pause button" print execution. I honestly thought that you couldn’t get away with that anymore, but it appears not. Thankfully, no swiss-army knives though.

Can I just say that I’m so pleased that the Speights Pub campaign did so well. Just about the perfect promotion, both audacious yet honest; a powerful combination. But have you ever noticed that nearly every piece of non-traditional advertising in New Zealand seems to get huge traction on the nightly news services?

The kiwis do experiential advertising better than nearly anyone. But if you want to put together a killer awards entry with evidence of substantial unpaid media exposure, it sure doesn’t hurt to live in a country where nothing much else ever happens.

The R/GA Nike seminar today was called "Three Ideas" and – this’ll surprise you – they shared with us three ideas that they hope will further insert the Nike brand into the hearts of consumers. This is not about advertising, but rather about creating useful and meaningful applications that people will love using. Look out for the little running widget that you can embed into your social networking site or blog: it’s a fully customised cartoon version of you, and it knows how much you’ve been running, and gets either fatter or faster as a result.

For the Aussies last night, it was a pity Disclaimer Guy didn’t score a gold in radio. Silver’s great, but if it went one better then the audience would’ve been treated to Cannes’ Best Dressed Man on stage. Paul Reardon and your three-piece suit . . . take a bow.

There’s a theme running through much of the highly-awarded work this year: humanity. The stuff that’s exciting the juries goes a step beyond the traditional innovation/impact/execution triumvirate: now if you want gold, you have to create something that (at least for a brief period of time) becomes a part of people’s lives. It’s not just interruption . . . and it’s beyond acceptance . . . the holy grail is to create something that people will want to seek out, and adopt as their own.

Jump online and have a look at the HBO Grand Prix, or even some of the design work, and of course the cyber entries. That damn bar is getting higher every year.

John Mescall is ECD of SMART.

Lessons from Cannes

Scott Nowell, from The Three Drunk Monkeys, discovers being in France is just like Schoolies week with money.

1. Cannes is the capital city of the Solarium Islands
Tans in Cannes are an accurate indicator of socio-economic status. If you have an impossibly dark, even tan, without even the hint of ever being sunburnt, you are most likely rich. The wealthy person's tan says "I spend a lot of time on my yacht, which is bigger than your imagination." Conversely it also says "I am skilled in solarium usage."

If you're desperate to appear rich but aren't sure of your tanning bed timings, you run the risk of looking like the girl on the terrace of the Carlton Hotel last night. She was radiant, but not in a good way. Boats were using her to navigate into Cannes harbour and several people were badly burnt by standing too close.

If you've got an odd collection of burns from falling asleep hungover next to a pool, you are probably here for the advertising festival.

2. There's a big advertising festival on
I know that because there was an opening gala last night and it was the largest recorded gathering of white-collar office workers outside of a capital city CBD. You couldn't miss it. There was booze. And we shoved it in our guts. And it was fun.

It's like schoolies week with money.

3. Every aeroplane is subtly different
Ads for familiar, award-friendly products like stain removal liquids, matchbox cars and mega-zoom cameras are still doing well. In that sense it feels a bit like déjà vu, but the reinterpretations of familiar briefs are clever. On the other hand there's a lot of fresh work in new categories that's downright inspiring. Damn these clever people.

Now I've got to get back to the pool. I didn't fly all this way to not get sunburnt next to another hairy, white advertising man.*

*That's you, Jim.

Which Cannes type are you?

Picking up gongs aside, there are three kinds of ad people that descend on Cannes in the middle of June every year.

This is my first time at the Festival, and there may be other, more subtle tribes lurking in dark corners of the Palais, but here is what I've noticed over the past four days.

THE NERDY TYPES
Believe it or not, there are advertising people here who religiously attend every seminar - or as many sessions as they can without suffering from over-exposure to the air conditioning in the cavernous Palais. These people - from agency and client side - are here to be inspired. They are here to hear many of advertising's most successful and passionate people talk about the direction of their industry. It's not easy, when you are bogged down in the everyday reality of a job in advertising, to take time out and think about or philosophise about your work, and how to make it better. No, unwinding at the pub after a bad day doesn't count. So, the people who care are easy to spot in Cannes.

THE CLASS CLOWNS
These guys are here to party, and the South of France is the perfect playground. There are villas with pools, a crappy beach, hundreds of bars, fast cars, faster boats, and women dressed in clingy gold dresses. Don't get me wrong. I think every conference-type event needs the partygoing class clowns. They're the ones that pick up the mood at the end of a day and make sure the nerdy types have some fun too. When you work back at home, there's nothing like an all expenses-paid frat-style holiday to banish memories of pulling all-nighters to crack that difficult brief. Keep at it, boys (and mostly they are).

THE NETWORKERS
Mostly, these types are the top cats at their organisation, or aspire to be the top cats. They are global and regional heads, who hold court on the sun-drenched verandahs of the glitzy, expensive hotels on La Croisette, entertaining clients and force-feeding journalists from around the world stories of how well their network is performing here, there and everywhere. The other types make fun of these guys, but really wish they were in their shiny shoes.

Broadly speaking though, people come to Cannes because it's the only opportunity they have to think about the work they do and how they can make it better - they just have different ways of arriving at that destination. Senior people also come because all the clients are here. (I'm told this is different from many moons ago.)

Some clients have even demanded that their agencies send a contingent to Cannes, so sounds like this thing's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger.

Andrea Sophocleous

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 5

Thursday is when Cannes kind of starts to become a big deal. Earlier on in the week, seminars were half full. Today, however, finds us queuing up for 45 minutes to guarantee a seat at the Saatchi new directors' showcase. This is pretty much the marquee event at the festival; it's been going since 1991, features the hottest new directors in the world, and always opens with a really cool bit of live theatre.

If you want to see some of the work, here are a few names and addresses. If AdNews is clever, they can make them links for you.

Romain Gavras
75.tv

Keith Schofield
keithschofield.com

Vincent Moon
temporaryareas.com

Benzo Theodore
parkpictures.com

Pablo Polledri
maniacplanet.com.ar

Harold Einstein
stationfilm.com

Directly afterwards, Coke and Weiden + Kennedy took us through their current brand journey, as they attempt to harness the power of storytelling to create greater connections with their consumers.

Specifically, they focused on Happiness Factory: that wonderful brand property that started with a 60 -TVC and is well on the way to becoming what Coke considers to be one of their most valuable assets.

Their philosophy is simple: take a 30-year approach to telling a story, and then tell it well. By the collective groans in the audience, you could tell that most attendees are used to working on brands that can't see past the next 30 days, let alone 30 years.

Rupert Murdoch is speaking tonight (told you Thursday is a big deal) and it'll be another packed house. I'm pretty sure that no one knows or cares exactly what he's going to say... the chance to breathe the same oxygen as people like him is more than enough to get you there.

Last night, heaps of networks and countries had their own parties. There was the Swedish party, the Dutch party, the Grey party, and over at our place was the SMART party: Me, Ash, Ash's iPod and a fridge full of booze. I suspect the Swedish party was the best.

No awards tonight, but everyone who's got work entered into film is tossing up whether to go to the screenings and see how the audience reacts to their stuff. This can be a pretty brutal experience and it's not for the weak, or those with anger-management issues (imagine sitting behind someone who whistles derisorily at the end of your ad... yeah, you'd want to rabbit-punch him too, wouldn't you).

OK, I have to get myself prettied-up for cocktails with Rupert. This means I'll have to wear something with a collar. I think I own something with a collar... maybe.

John Mescall is ECD of SMART.

SMARTARSE IN CANNES: Day 6

To paraphrase a certain intellectually-challenged redheaded fish 'n chip shop owner, "if you're reading this it means I have been killed . . . by a combination of alcohol, lack of sleep and liver-atrophying French food".

It's Friday afternoon, and most people here are suffering from Cannes-fatigue. But still the show must go on, and go on it does.

The best seminar of the week, easily, was put on by easily the best agency in the world - Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The stuff they're doing is so far and away superior to the vast bulk of advertising expenditure, it's almost embarrassing.

These are the guys who convinced Burger King to remove the Whopper from their menu for the day, and film the responses . . . who created and sold fake magazines in an ingenious campaign for a struggling beer brand . . . who hired actors to approach attorneys with the stated aim of suing the makers of Coke Zero on behalf of Coke on the grounds that Coke Zero tasted too similar to Coke, then shot the briefings and aired them as commercials espousing the fact that Coke Zero tastes just like Coke.

Wow. But the really cool thing about their presentation was the humility with which is was made. To be honest, some of these seminars are nothing more than thinly-veiled exercises in self-promotion. But the CP+B guys gave us genuine insights with a generosity of spirit that was a joy to behold.

They also gave us Joe Pytka, probably the best commercials director the world has ever seen. This guy has won the Palm d'Or three times in a row . . . twice. A freakishly brilliant storyteller. And he not only treated us to some of his favourite work, he also presented it in a way that had everyone eating out of the palm of his hand.

Picture a man who looks like a cross between a shambling on-the-wagon Nick Nolte and Doc from the Back to the Future movies, and you've got Joe Pytka. Brilliant, naturally funny, and not afraid to tell us all to "shut the fuck up with your applause all the time". Seriously, you'd fly halfway around the world just to hear this guy speak.

Straight after that came the Campaign Brief pool party. There were Aussies, a pool, plenty of beer and unrelenting sunshine. I'll leave to you imagine the outcome.

Tomorrow's the Titanium and Film awards. Plenty of shortlists for Oz in film, so fingers crossed there. My tip is Schweppes Burst. Go jimmy and cuzzy.

John Mescall is ECD of SMART.