Cogs in Cannes – Day 4
by Paul Coglan, senior creative, Meerkats.
Seriously, i can feel it. My brain is giving birth to second brain. I saw all seven seminars and man the memory card has reached capacity, so now i’ll just alleviate some of the pressure by sharing some of it with you.
Actually, before i do that – just want to do a bit of a plug for the Radio Grand Prix campaign for Mercedes-Benz via Network BBDO Jo-burg. A beautifully written, really lateral thought pivoting off great product benefits. The same team also won a Gold lion for an acne cream radio campaign. If you head to the cannes website and listen to these two campaigns, you’ll notice there’s a style of radio ad emerging – a unique weird quirky humanistic way of telling stories around brands. Head here and have a listen. http://www.canneslions.com/work/radio/.
Okay, my day kicked off with a talk from Samsung about where interactive TV is headed. Basically they were discussing their new Smart TV which allows people to play with apps, store an entire virtual wardrobe based on you being scanned in. Cosmetics companies can use facial recognition to work out what make up people might want to wear for that day. Check it out. I love their line: ‘Experience the future of TV today’…very original way of couching a futuristic technology…(insert sound of cicadas).
Next talk got a bit more interesting.
Mofilms was started by Aussie expat David Alberts – an ex big ECD of ‘traditional agencies’. Basically he specialises in, among other things, user-generated or crowd-sourced films for brands. He does a lot of work with Chevrolet in the U.S. Basically they came up with an idea to get independent film makers to create their own film about their experience of Route 66. The winning film will appear at the Superbowl. Boom. One thing I thought was quite cool was the concept of independent film makers making back stories from scenes in a traditional TV ad. For example, if the Chevy drives into a run down servo on Route 66, what are some films or back stories that could be created around that? Why is it run down? What happened? Pretty interesting.
Jesse What’s-his-face from The Social Network was on stage with them. In my opinion he didn’t add much apart from saying he isn’t on Facebook and only learned about it through making the movie. Well, he did talk about his One Up Me site or App, which sparked a conversation about networking and consumer involvement.
Next up, the CEO of Google was on with his Creative Officer of Google labs. They discussed where Online search is headed and touched on their latest invention – Google Wallet, which is basically all our credit cards and money will now be on our phones. We will simply pick which app, ie credit card, then swipe to pay. Easy peasy.
Next up was an amazing presentation by Sir Edward de Bono. I watched it from a chill out zone.
Basically he had an overhead projector, pieces of A4 paper and a row of coloured pens, which he used to crudely draw his genius other-wordly perspectives on creativity. No wonder this guy was knighted, seriously amazing. He revealed for the first time in the world a new word – ebne. Basically it means our creative thinking is Excellent, But Not Enough. So next time we are critiquing our work internally let’s use this ebne terminology. He also threw out a challenge to the world, it’s as simple as this: How do you create more value in the police? He welcomes any response, and the winning thought will appear in his next book. We must email our thoughts to paddyhills@hotmail.com. He has set up a new Institute for new value (Google it). He was amazing, drawing scribbles like A Beautiful Mind – almost mathematical diagrams of how we think.
After gathering pieces of my brain from the floor, i went to the next seminar – Microsoft’s X-Box prezzo. What an awesome speaker he was. What awesome technology is coming out for gamers. He revealed the very latest. He rolled over his powerpoint slides by ninja kicking the air at a motion sensor. He spoke certain words to make his demonstration videos play. Basically gamers are going to be able to walk through a 3D game version of Disneyland from their own living room. In car games, people are going to turn their heads, and in the game, their head turns to see to the side. The screen will now do a complete 3D scan of a player and integrate them in.
He dresses and looks like a stoner dude. He wears shades the whole time. He’s probably early 30s. And he’s the Creative director of the whole operation.
R/GA was pretty amazing. Bob Greenwood looks like Yoda. As a company, they are about to reach the end of their nine year cycle. Next cycle is going to be the Functional integration years. Basically they are expanding their operations to now do EVERYTHING for their global clients. They showed us their case study for Nike, about how they started by building platforms and then have gone on to create products for them. They want to do this for all of their clients. They also shared their latest thing – Nikefilmroom.com – check it out.
Leo Burnett prezzo was okay. They discussed their Humankind approach to branding.
Next was Facebook. It was pretty cool. Their Chief Marketing Officer talked to us about the opportunities moving forward. She discussed the Nike Write The Future case study about integrating it into the social network. She said next steps are they’re going to create a Client Council and also will be networking offline in communities for good causes.
So, today was me locked away in the seminars and just absorbing. I’m still cogitating it all. Overall, still feeling as pumped up as this guy…