USA Today
Laura Petrecca, USA Today
CANNES — Company-branded bungalows are being set up waterside in this French Riviera town, stocked with cold Coca-Colas, hot espressos and loads of information on each firm’s business capabilities.
Inside a small beachfront cabana, ad-effectiveness tracker Ace Metrix has chocolate, cookies and a stack of 116-page “BlackBooks” that outline its credentials. A short walk away — at the Palais des Festivals building — advertising is everywhere. Brightly colored promotional banners for the likes of Microsoft and AT&T line the outside entrance. Inside, there are logos and company information on walls, stairs and railings.
Sunday marks the start of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — the ad world’s largest trade show and awards event — and marketers, ad agencies, tech companies and others are primed to showcase their brands to the nearly 12,000 attendees at this week-long event.
Each year, festivalgoers gather in Cannes to view standout ad campaigns, network with others and learn about the latest creative and technological advances in their industry.
Big-name marketing, media and technology companies such as Omnicom, Time Warner, Google and Facebook will host a range of events — educational seminars and panels, dinner parties and late-night beach bashes throughout the week.
The festival “is really a networking opportunity,” says Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman. “People are in the mood to talk and to think out of the box.”
The event offers an efficient means to meet and mingle with clients, potential clients and many others, he says.
“In one location there is an extraordinary number of CMOs (chief marketing officers), CEOs, agency heads, marketers and people we deal with day in and day out,” he says.
Although the festival officially begins on Sunday, some judging was already underway to select the most creative and innovative entries in 16 communications categories, including TV and movie ads, Internet films, outdoor campaigns and radio commercials.
MORE: Get complete coverage of the Cannes Ad Festival
This year, the festival received a record 35,765 entries from 92 countries.
There will be dozens of seminars at the Palais festival headquarters, with topics including “the new world of online content” and “what connects in comedy.”
Guest speakers include TV host Conan O’Brien, music mogul Sean Combs and photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Festival organizers are marking the event’s 60th anniversary with an exhibit that showcases past award-winning ads. It includes Coke’s 1971 “Hilltop” commercial, which had a diverse group of people singing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” the 1959 “Think Small” ad for the Volkswagen Beetle and the 2011 Chrysler Super Bowl ad with Eminem.
At the Palais, an exhibit charting “the evolution of advertising” is open to everyone in Cannes, not just festival-goers.
From his nearby cabana, Jonathan Symonds, Ace Metrix executive vice president for marketing, reflects how much innovation and advertising have changed in the festival’s six decades, particularly in the past decade with the rise of the Internet, mobile devices and social media.
“We were still doing dial-up (Internet access) in big numbers in 2003,” he says. “Who knows what the next 10 years will hold?”
