The fourth of SKMG’s Cannes edition of its newsletter COMMPRESS, CANNESPRESS, covers the Cannes Lions from La Croisette.
Day 4. We’re getting to the good stuff now. Today saw hangovers as big as the croissant-stuffed seagulls getting around the promenade, all reportedly victims of last night’s Spotify party, which could be heard from Antibes.
You know what else was big? The sessions. Today went hard on values driven marketing and the need to believe that your brand can – and should – make a difference to the world, no matter who you are or what you produce.
It’s an easy one when you’re someone like Kate Cronin, the Chief Brand Officer at Moderna, who says the best thing is its ability to make an impact with vaccines worldwide. But, life-saving businesses aside, TikTok’s Head of Global Marketing Kate Jhaveri says the platform is proud of the community it has created and how the platform empowers people by making sure their voices and stories are heard.
We also went Inside the Jury Room of the PR Lions where we heard from Kat Thomas, One Green Bean’s Founder and Global Chief Creative Officer, who spilled what beans she could on the three things Lions judges were looking for when picking winners: one being that earned media is at the heart of it all; two being cultural relevancy, that is, the campaign needed to be authentic for the brand and for its audience; and lastly, that it was credible for the world we’re living in by being inclusive and celebrating diversity in the right way. Do with this what you will.
Patagonia deserves a mention for sticking to its guns and remaining a true leader in the clothing manufacturing space which, as we learnt today, produces more carbon emissions than the airline and shipping industries combined. Think about that next time you impulsively add to cart. Another notable mention goes to Scottish-born fashion designer Stuart Trevor – of AllSaints fame – for not only his “the last thing the world needs is another clothing brand” line, but for creating a new clothing company that actually doesn’t produce any clothes. Instead, it re-cuts/shapes/tailors from old and vintage pieces. Talk about making a difference.
And a stellar lineup at the Brand Marketers Academy today saw Andrew hearing from Heinz’s Global Chief Growth Officer Diana Frost, GUT’s joint CCOs Ricardo Casal and Juan Javier Peña Plaza and former Wieden + Kennedy Chief Strategy Officer turned lecturer at the University of Michigan, Marcus Collins, who also happened to handle digital strategy for a ubiquitous pop star who shares a last name with an author of this newsletter.
The takeaways? Understand cultural drivers of consumer behaviour, “consumption at its core is a cultural act” according to Collins: “We choose brands and brand new products that are congruent with how we want to be seen in the world.” Collins believes most brands still follow culture “sucking the tailpipe” and ruining the party.
The real opportunity is to lead by participating in discourse and creating new language, behaviour or artifacts: think Kodak with “cheese” or DeBeers popularising the diamond engagement ring. The opportunities, he says, lie outside the bell curve on the fringes of subculture (remember when we spoke about that?). The good news? The internet is driving greater intersectionality and a wider spread of subcultures than ever before, so there’s plenty of opportunities to find your niche and get involved.
Overheard in Cannes
“Brands need to move at the speed of culture.” – Edelman’s Marie Claire Maalouf
Diana Frost
“So many marketers come into a business and want to change this and that without understanding what the foundations are about.” – Heinz’s global chief growth officer Diana Frost
“We set up pods – cross functional teams – we started with three now we have 34 dedicated to really big cultural products.” – Diana Frost once more
“AI showed up but it didn’t dominate the creative work. It was used to supercharge the storytelling.” – One Green Bean’s Kat Thomas
“We don’t judge creatives by their bad ideas, we judge them by their good ones.” – Ricardo Casal, GUT
Kate Jhaveri, Kate Cronin and Mustafa Shamseldin
“I sit next to the CFO and my best friend… a huge partner of mine.” – Moderna’s brand boss Kate Cronin
“Sometimes you sit in a bubble and design research to tell you what yourself want to hear.” – Kate Cronin
“The new role of the CMO is to enable creativity rather than be creative themselves.” – PepsiCo’s global growth and marketing head Mustafa Shamseldin
“Marketing is the language of the world.” – Mustafa Shamseldin, and, yes, he did say it
“PR and advertising are one thing. They are not separate.” – Ian Black from New Vegas
Picks & Recs
Conference moderator tip 1
Much like the MC of a wedding, the moderator of a conference is not the star of the show. Hosting a panel of big-name CMOs, Sophie Devonshire from The Marketing Society simply could not and would not keep quiet. She talked more than the CMOs. The Sophie Show was not what we signed up for.
The lime green pantsuit theory
An old friend of SKMG would wear a bright lime green pantsuit to conferences to ensure she stood out in the crowd. Snapchat execs must know her too, given the lurid, technicolur building they set up in Cannes. In a sea of pale French buildings, you’d be hard-pressed to miss it. (Less imaginatively, or perhaps due to budget cuts, Reddit ran with the same big red and orange box construction from last year.)
One nagging question
Why does the Deloitte Digital logo have a green dot at the end of Deloitte? They aren’t environmental consultants, or a petrol company. Green appropriation perhaps?
Whenever you need somebody, reach for Rick Astley
1980s pop star and meme lord Rick Astley was an unlikely winner at Cannes, in that, Specsavers UK was for using him to flog hearing aids. The campaign won the Grand Prix Lion in the PR category. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised? Astley is an icon. His hearing is failing. And many Brits have long mangled the lyrics to Never Gonna Give You Up (to be fair, probably because they were pissed at the pub, not going deaf).
Lollicop
Not a pick or a rec, per say, but a picture. Upon hearing that those who attempted to photograph French police run the risk of arrest, Neil challenged the team to capture one doing something fun. And if a cop enjoying a lollipop doesn’t count, pray tell, what does?
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