B&T’s on the ground in Cannes and this is the first of our live(ish) dispatches from the Croisette.
After some entirely self-inflicted flight dramas, I touched down in Nice on Saturday afternoon. First stop? Lidl, to purchase all of the things I forgot to pack in Sydney – shower gel, shampoo and the like. Second stop? A nearby cash machine because Lidl was apparently experiencing a nationwide card reader outage. So far, so France.
Then, of course, it’s the calm before the storm. Tying up some loose ends from back at base and crafting a self-indulgent out-of-office response to remind everyone that while they’re wrapping up warm back in Melbourne and Sydney, I’m on the French Riviera. Naturellement.
Jet lag led to me hitting the hay at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, meanwhile, was a new day with some important tasks. First, collecting my press pass, followed by a trip to a local boulangerie for another coffee and a croissant, digging deep into my hippocampus to extricate the conversational French I learned as a child. I haven’t resorted to “parlez-vous Anglais?” just yet, though admittedly, I haven’t been discussing high-level philosophical concepts.
A wander down the Croisette followed to see which agencies and vendors had the largest presence. Needless to say, perhaps, it was the vendors. Zefr, which offers brand suitability and safety tech for the walled gardens, had the ad that most caught our eye. Though I wonder if the life raft it offers for the raging seas of the walled gardens shouldn’t be necessary, considering the walled gardens are the ones who control the tides.
Then, a pit stop at the Carlton to run through final content checks with our friends at Uber Advertising for our panel discussion on Monday afternoon. Spotted: X CEO Linda Yaccarino in the next room, surrounded by fawning adlanders. I wonder how much harder her job has become since the last time we crossed paths in Cannes. Still, the rosé should be a welcome break from the growing societal unrest in the US.
Then we decamped to another nearby watering hole with slightly more reasonably priced pilsners before a dip in the pool at another friend of the publication’s villa.
Sundays don’t get much better. But the best is yet to come.
