Day Trois Has Got Me Feeling In Such A Way

He’s back! B&T’s Cannes man on the ground, IAG marketeer Mark Pearson (in overly dark photo above), is back with his daily diary of all things creative and all things Côte d’Azur. Read his day trois snapshot here…

It’s hard to believe I’m at the half way point of my Cannes trip. I’m living in a constant state of feeling late for things and eagerly excited the next session.

However, for the first time this week, I’ve been graced with a late start. If I’m being honest, I did grapple with the idea of going to the beach for two hours but my summer body nor my tan was ready to frolic in the south of France sun. So that’s a pass.

Instead, I decided to take some advice from my boss and spend two hours down in the basement of the palais and get among all the awarded print campaigns. I’ll try and use 5 words or less to describe it. OOH, how I love you.

It was so awesome to walk through row after row of incredible work. It was like a free museum of advertising – does this exist somewhere in the world, if so, sign me up!

Being able to review the work side by side, really puts it into perspective and really highlights when something is truly incredible. I did get a little carried away though and ending up having to sprint to class to make the first session of the day.

Challenger thinking, presented by PHD Worldwide and Eatbigfish. A timely and acute talk about how big incumbent companies need to start really thinking and acting like challengers if they want to survive in the future. A great case study of Oatly (plant-based milk company) going up against big dairy.

As one of the many almond milk drinking millennial marketers, god we sound like a cult… It was great to see how a small challenger brand is using creativity, distinctiveness and purpose to go up against the dairy industry and make waves #donthaveacowman

The afternoon agenda lands me attending a session by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO. As a non-frequent user of the book these days, I was quite keen to see what she had to say.

Firstly, Cannes is blessed with some incredible and intelligent women speakers this year. Sheryl is most certainly one of them. Most impressively, she’s weathered bigger brand storms than most people. So, as you can imagine, the interference of fake news during the previous US election was a hot topic.

However, despite this monumental PR nightmare for the brand, she had the tenacity and passion to come back fighting harder than ever. For not only better regulation but meaning for the brand, when trust for it was plummeting. She also spoke about how they are now working with governments in major regions, such as America and Europe, to help better govern themselves and protect people globally.

She talked on a personal note about growth through struggle, which was both relevant to her personal life challenges and with the brand. I left feeling with a much more positive impression of the company and a new-found adoration for this boss.

Then back to the classroom for a timely and relevant class on the power of having a strong client and agency relationship. The global brand manager from Unilever (Ben Curtis) and his agency partner (Tom Elliston) from LOLA Mullenlowe, gave any awesome and earnest presentation.

They act like mates and sort of look alike, perhaps this is where their synergy comes from.

They left the group with some pearls of wisdom about honesty, passion and time together being the most important attributes for great team work. They also showed a great commercial they produced for Magnum Ice cream.

Fun fact, it featured one of my most favourite drag queens from RuPaul, Willem.

Magnum, shantay you stay.

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Cannes Lions 2019