June 19, 2018—Modesty definitely becomes you right now. You’re putting aside a kind of rewards you could be angling for—whether at work, in a relationship, or in another area—and you’re simply operating on the strength of your desire to do the right thing. The goodwill you’re creating is reflected in everything around you, making your world both calm and bright. The bonus is that your karma is getting better by the minute.
My second day of the Cannes Lions Festival started with the session called F**k-Ups. The Mother of Reinvention, hosted by Untitled Worldwide. The talk was based around Jimmy Choo’s co-founder Tamara Mellon, who was fired from Vogue, and how this failure catalyzed her into creating Jimmy Choo. What I found most intriguing from her talk was the discussion of the fashion industry being incredibly archaic and having to catch up with consumers’ need for instant gratification, in relation to e-commerce. Because the fashion industry does the fashion shows and exhibitions which, in a sense, creates a “look but can’t touch” dynamic. However, her recognizing this need for the movement from the archaic way of fashion allowed Jimmy Choo to rebuild itself when it was going down a money-pit of sorts. The biggest idea I got from this talk, however, was the idea of test-failure-retest-failure-retest-success. Mellon recognized that data gives much insight, but you can never truly predict how markets can react to brands’ decisions and new products. A topic I wish Mellon had gotten more into is how she felt that advertising of her own self and product caused failure, and how she has recovered from it, in reference to her return from rehab.
The next session of the day, Is Technology the Downfall or Savior of Creativity, hosted by Samsug and Cheil created an interesting vision into the fourth industrial revolution of how big data and artificial intelligence are changing everything. This movement into the “one-person marketer,” meaning that anyone can be an artist, designer, filmmaker, or any other creative type if given the right technology provided great understanding into how technology allows for improving not only self but also improving the world. The three mega trends of technology: personal empowerment, people demanding brand to take a stand, and people seeing technology as a force for good. I really appreciated this talk because it took the common theme that I have been seeing in every session of the festival of “social empowerment” by brands to better the world, while also taking it a step forward. This is because Samsung showed how technology has now made it that there is infinite room to create and innovate because it will only continue to become more available and advanced. My only issue with this session is that I wish Samsung expanded more on why technology could be considered the downfall of creativity in any capacity.
After this session, I saw the Fame or Fail? Promoting, Protecting, and Entertaining in Untrusted Times, hosted by Edelman, which featured the actress Ellen Pompeo and Richard Edelman from the PR firm Edelman. They provided a professionally dichotomous, yet culturally coinciding perspective of the importance of creating an authentic brand with emphasis on true, authentic societal missions. The talk cited companies such as Starbucks and Heineken as examples of how to maintain transparency and recognition of the “uncomfortable” when it comes to company social mistakes, which brought Pompeo to the standpoint of celebrities and influencers. Pompeo also discussed how the line between celebrity and influencer is slowly deteriorating because there is an emphasis of creating conversations and breaking down walls of celebrities to make them more “influencer-like,” so transparency and authenticity in their brands are more important than ever. All in all, I think this was a wonderful talk about how to better brand culture and acceptance; however, I do wish that Edelman provided more tangible examples of how this has been and can be applied in the advertising and PR world.
What Matters Next, hosted by YouTube is the next talk I was at, and it explored, similar to the theme of most of the talks of the festival, the importance of openness and transparency. YouTube paired with L’Oréal to discuss the importance of YouTube, specifically in the beauty world to allow access of content in a more accessible way. Because both brands’ missions are focused on embracing diversity and self-expression, whether it be by tutorials, how-to’s, or just simply sharing content, it was incredible to understand how they collaborate to provide audiences with exactly what they want. I thought their solution to how to hack this exactness of audience was beautifully simple: just figure out what people are searching, literally just listen to the consumer. From this, the only aspect of the talk that I would have like to explore more is how YouTube and L’Oréal have created such an inbred and seemingly native kind of advertising and what it will look like in its evolution in years to come.
To finish off my day, I went to the Inside the Jury for Pharma, which was incredibly interesting to truly see inside the minds of the jurors. What made this talk even more incredible was being able to listen to the Jury President from FCB and then get to hear him speak about his own journey into advertising, specifically pharma advertising. It truly made me rethink my anxiety that I will forever be stuck in one kind of advertising once I enter the workforce.
good thanks.
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