[Pam in Cannes] Joining the conversation

Answer one thing for me – why do the beggars in France have dogs, surely one mouth is difficult enough to feed?

Eish! I have a bad headache. The opening gala was so bad (good) last night, I clearly managed to pour tons of champagne/wine down my throat and eish! Carlton beach, gorgeous food, lots of uuuuumm wine and a brilliant DJ. I have to say it was raining at one point, thought it might flop, but, well, let’s just say today is a cracker.

So what did I see, do, hear yesterday… Saw a couple press ads that made me smile. One for Bazooka gum: a little guy has blown a bubblegum bubble so big he crashes his go-kart into a tree and the bubble acts like an airbag – this in fact got a Silver Outdoor Lion. Another for Osram: the lamps last so long, the neon figures they are showing become old – for example, the dancing girl is an old lady – three in the series. One other for Anando milk from India: a young boy is so strong from the milk that he is able to push a piece of a building out of its symmetry. One thing that perplexed me in this one, is the boy is white, why not an Indian guy, hmmmm?

I watched film entries for a short while on household appliances; boring campaign for Mac, weird DoCoMo pieces from Asia, etc, etc and then came a campaign for Panasonic Lumix cameras – well, to cut a long campaign short, it was really brilliant – it’s two teams fighting it out to take pictures of one another. It was really tough and combat like but non-violent. At the end of each commercial, it invites you to the website, www.lumix-war.com, to see who finally wins, it’s really engaging. There are quite a few commercials in this campaign, so clearly it ran over quite a lengthly period. Watch this space, it may do something.

Mmmmmm, I attended a few seminars. The first one by Profero called Digitology – one of the presenters being none other than Lord David Putnam himself, who has chosen to return to the advertising game. The other was a debate hosted by MRM about social media i.e. Facebook, MySpace and the like. In both of these they spoke about advertising taking a seismic shift; disruption versus engagement; functionality/entertainment; what is the human need; know your audience; people go on-line for a purpose, yeah, yeah, yeah…I sat there thinking, hang on, this is Cannes for G-d’s sake. What’s happened to the BIG IDEA??

Fortunately I got some form of an answer. The last seminar of the afternoon for me was hosted by Nicholas Moore of Wunderman and here he addressed all that digital stuff but got down to ideas. Basically he covered: In the past we used to fire our advertising message and forget, but nowadays marketers have to have conversations with consumers: Marketers have to actively listen; join and lead the conversation; become the topic of conversation; let go of control; create many conversation (pieces). He showcased Barak Obama’s DIGITAL campaign during his election proccess, it was fascinating.

Another day on the French Riviera… Well, somebody’s got to do it!

Until tomorrow,
Pam

SA’s first Gold Lion goes to BBDO Cape Town