Cannes Lions
A compact guide to Cannes to aspiring lions and veterans alike
gรกbor bagladi
gabor.bagladi@geometry.com instagram/amanfromporlock amanfromporlock.tumblr.com
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Geometry Global
kata kerekes
kata.kerekes@geometry.com instagram/_kerekeskata behance/kerekeskata Geometry Global
art
bright future
2017 august
Our Journey 2016 october
They tell you all about it
2017 june
They spend a week in Cannes 2017 march They run for the Hungarian Young Lions Kata starts designing layouts
2015 Gabor starts writing
However they pronounce it, they all mean the same thing. Cannes is probably the fanciest town of the super fancy Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur region in the South of France. Size of the city Normally, the municipality is inhabited by some 70 000 lucky residents. In festival season, this number multiplies, giving visitors the feeling of walking down Oxford Street in rush hour on Christmas Eve..
festival normal
kæn ka:n kænz keins ka:nes
The original town was built on an unsettlingly steep hill, home to the historic quarter called Le Suquet. The narrow winding streets of the old town are packed with cute little cafĂŠs and Michelin-star restaurants. Should you get bored of rock climbing, you can just chill in the Old Port, where, apart from the aquamarine sight of the sea, loads of mid-range restaurants serve quite decent food 24/7. As you pass the quay, you cannot avoid glancing at the Palais, where the majority of Cannes Festival of Creativity takes place.
Welcome
Rue Meynadier
Keep strolling east, and you’ll end up on the poshest street of the entire town: the world-famous Promenade de la Croisette. Here, a bunch of luxury hotels offer coffee for 15 EUR. Plus, you get to sit in the scorching heat under a translucent parasol with a hundred other badge-flipping people squeezed into the same 2 square feet as you.
Rue D’Antibes
There’s also the central part of new town with Rue D’Antibes in its centre, where you can window shop for as long as you can stand the midday sun. The same area hosts heated parties at night that you’d better avoid if you’d like to save your new dress from rosé stains, your espadrilles from being repeatedly stepped on and your wallet from getting stolen. The most genuine local spots can be found on Rue Meynadier and its surroundings: these are the locales where you can truly mingle with the locals, be it for a tall glass of Cointreau or witnessing a fist fight going down next to your table. Of course, there’s a lot more to lovely Cannes than all this, unfortunately, you won’t have the time to discover the rest, ‘cause you’ll be too busy going to talk after talk after talk.
Le Suquet Old Port Palais
Promenade de la Hyatt Cannes Croisette Grand Hotel Martinez
tal nen
Inter Carl conti ton
ere
Majestic B arr i
so you might be in need of some refreshment‌
Cointreau smell Be advised, Cannes is always scorching‌
taste strong
85 Rue Meynadier, 06400 Cannes
in a truly local joint‌
86 Rue Meynadier, 06400 Cannes
and while you’re at it, you can nibble on exquisite Italian treats.
Our Lodgings Having been to Cannes prior to the festival, we knew that Le Suquet was the area to stay in. AirBnB has plenty of listings in the area, ranging from tiny studios to luxury apartments with a sea view. We found an atmospheric little flat on top of the hill. The owner probably works with the best property photographer of our time. We knew it was going to be small. We just didn’t know that it was going to be that small. Due to the narrow streets, we could monitor everything going down in the neighbourhood: drunken festival goers stumbling up the steps; bakers on their day off shaving in their kitchen, listening to the French version of Scooter; lovers tangled in long embraces; elderly ladies discussing their plant-watering techniques... what have you. We were right.
Le Suquet is indeed the place to stay.
About the festival 17-24 june Budapest
A sleepless night, two flights, several hours killed at Munich Airport and a taxi ride from Nice were all worth it: we arrived safe and sound.
Cannes
Daily Routine brainstorming about saving the world sleep
Talk 1-2.
breakfast
Talk 3-4.
lunch
dinner
rest
party
Cannes Archetypes The CEO:
They’re the ones popping up at the most random places. They may be having a coffee next to you in some alley café, sitting in your row at an afternoon talk or showing their clients around on the Croisette. No matter how hard they try to remain undercover, you’ll always recognise the men wearing an unbuttoned Ralph Lauren shirt with chino shorts and deck shoes or espadrilles, and their female counterparts in pastel jumpsuits, straw hats and wedges. If you’re not convinced, just look at their badge, they’ll most likely be the regional or global CEO of your very agency. So careful with those drinks in your hand.
The Client on Holiday:
You won’t really see them at talks or any kind of industry-related event during the day. They usually turn up for happy hours in the afternoon and stay out late every night. Simply because they don’t care about the festival. They’re on holiday on the company’s dime. That probably explains why their badges are kept facing inwards.
The Young Creative:
If you ever find yourself with a group of guys in their twenties, clad in outfits bought on a student loan entirely from Urban Outfitters, you’ll know it’s them. Girls with nose piercings, custom tote bags and feather tattoos, guys in Acapulco shirts, snapback baseball caps and sports socks pulled up to their knees, looking for free booze and new business connections. They cop a Young Lions Competitor badge and keep staring at yours to find out where you might be from. Some of them may be worth having a conversation with, others are just too immersed in their own greatness, having finally made it to Cannes.
The Outsider:
Another interesting type with the aforementioned, inward-facing badges. Their reasons, however, are way different to the Client-on-Holiday kind. The Outsiders are the unlucky few who actually paid for their festival pass. They’re there because they think Cannes might open their eyes to new perspectives. Ranging from small business owners to hobby photographers, the outsiders are there because they think it’s cool, and they can afford it. You’ll see them standing alone at the bar at a Terrace party with a warm Coronita in their hand, nodding rhythmically to a Sean Paul song. They’ll attempt to engage everyone in conversation, their success rate, however, is rather low.
The Freeloader:
The freeloaders may be agency creatives, account directors or even clients, united by the desire of getting as much free stuff out of their week in Cannes as possible. They are the ones who can tell you where the next happy-hour sesh is held, who have insider tips on how to get into the Shots party without an invitation and who jump the queue before a major talk by telling the security guard that they just want to use the toilet. They can be found in the vicinity of any kind of free stuff, be it Burger King Chicken Fries, glasses of champagne, Cannes Lions T-shirts or the Snapchat wheel.
The Cannes Fanatic, also known as the Cannes First-Timer:
They are the ones who get the best value for their money. They get up with the sun, go for a run on the promenade and show up half an hour early for the first talk. They’re like Hermione in the Prisoner of Azkaban. You’ll see them at two talks in a row, and when you ask them how they liked the previous one, they’ll tell you that since then they’d gone to see two more. They proudly flash Cannes Lions T-shirts, always have suncream on and wear comfortable shoes. Most of them are aspiring account managers, trying to soak up as much as possible during their short stay on the Riviera. You won’t really see them late at night as they’ll be too busy processing their notes from that day.
How to wear your badge?
Without a badge, you're out in the wilderness.
Prices at the Festival Water: Handed to you free of charge at the festival entrance on the first two days. After that, still free, but virtually non-existent. Better bring an empty bottle that you can fill in the bathroom. Alternatively, you can stand in the queue at the buffet. It will cost you 3 EUR and about an hour of your time.
x1
Two glasses of orange juice and a bottle of water at the Connections beach:
x2
â‚Ź 30
Yeah. No kidding.
what you expect Snacks: Most of them are free, if applicable. If they hand it to you without asking for money, take it.
reality
Venues Wherever you're headed, it's going to unbearably hot. Unless you're unlucky enough to pick a place with functional air conditioning. In that case, it's going to be cold. So much so that you might catch one.
the centre of the hive, home to the fanciest panels
Palais
a little more humble, the ultimate runner-up venue a cute workshop area, ideal for a 15 minute break
Palais II Lions Health
Innovation
interesting panels with a strong heatstroke hazard
Beaches
Entertainment a love child of showbiz and advertising
Outdoor
parasols, drinks and great talks: what else could you need?
The Talks Whatever panel we picked, one thing was crystal clear: advertising is all about good now. Not money, profit or beating the competition. Good. Which we were quite happy about, to be completely frank. Apparently, you really can do good, even in a profession that’s associated with greed, miscommunication and brainwashing. Good had many forms this year. Just like the most awarded campaigns, the majority of interesting talks was focusing on changing the world for the better. To diminish poverty. To break the glass ceiling. To step up against sexism. To fight child labour. To celebrate pride.
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Not all talks really did the trick though. Some of the highly anticipated celebrity panels, for instance, were quite dull and superficial. At times, you felt like you’d heard it all before. But then again, there were some good ones, like ASAP Rocky or Alexander Wang. And even better ones, ones that attracted half as many people. We heard Trevor Robinson, Britain’s first black creative director, talk about bravery in advertising. It was super cool and ultra-inspiring. We saw NASA astronauts, Russian anarchists and learnt about shooting a commercial in zero G, a panel watched by exactly 14 people. We found out how the world’s biggest arsehole helped people donate organs, how you can believe in your creatives and stick to them after a failed campaign, how diversity makes for a better agency and that David Droga still has loads of ideas up his sleeve.
Symptoms of a Great Panel
Having seen dozens of talks day after day, we found a rather unsettling, conspicuous pattern. No matter how hard Cannes promotes diversity and equal opportunities, it’s still blatantly Anglo-Saxon. Most of the talks were held by Brits and Americans with some Australians thrown in to break the pattern. All in the name of cultural diversity. Well, that’s definitely something to work on in the years to come.
8 days 45 min
one talk
10, 6day
without a pause
If you’ve made it to the festival as a Young Lion, It means you’ve already won. Enjoy. The competition is just the icing on the cake.
Create an integrated digital campaign in the span of 24 hours.
Oh yeah. timeline Briefing
Brainstorming
Understanding the brief
Young Lions Party
Sleep
Anxiety
Mucking about
Getting the visuals done
Getting the copy done
We win
Contemplating our chances We win not
The Venue
Far from the splendour of the professional festival, the Young Lions competition is held in the basement of the Palais. Grey fitted carpet and blinding neon lights lead your way to the competition area, where windowless gloom and creative despair await the participants. Every country is assigned a tiny cubicle with an iMac, a French keyboard and a Wacom pad. If you’re unlucky enough to be Hungarian, you will be seated right next to the corridor, which means that every single person passing by will be looking at your screen. You cannot use any other devices but the ones provided, which means that both halves of the team are required to work on one computer. This makes for a hell of a task. Given the circumstances, we thought ahead and decided to spend as little time there as possible. We got the brief, came up with the idea, worked it out in detail, and only then went back to get it done. Still, the image of our workstation bathed in white neon lights is burnt into our eyes forever.
The Brief
Briefing at Cannes Lions is no walk in the park. It takes a good 2 hours to sit through the entire process, yet, when you’re done, you feel totally puzzled and haven’t the faintest idea of what the task is all about. Another 3 hours of dissecting and analysing your brief will give you a fairly reasonable understanding of the brief, but you’ll also realise that there’s no way you can create an integrated campaign by adhering to all the rules set by it. So you start brainstorming.
Brainstorming This is where all the fun starts. The advantage of Cannes over sitting in your office is that you can buy a couple of beers, sit in the window of your AirBnB, and watch the beautiful city while you’re desperately trying to bring something remarkable to life. It will come to you. Eventually. This time, we were lucky, as our idea was conceived during the briefing. We were really trying to line up arguments against it, but after a few hours, we realised it was best to go with our gut. So we went for it. We designed our campaign down to the last detail, so the next day we would only have to go to our station and get it done. When we felt we’d done enough for the day, we went to the Young Lions party. Yes, they organise your party on the day you were briefed, before the day you’re competing. Thanks for that. It was pretty lame, to be frank, especially compared to all the other parties we’d been to.
The Big Day
Since the party didn’t really do it for us, we were only moderately hung-over when we got up. We looked at the clock and thought we would have ample time to go for lunch and head to the Palais after, which did cause some problems later on. We had our favourite dish at our favourite Italian salsamenteria, then realised how late it was, and ran to the competition area at about 1 PM. Seven hours may seem like a lot of time, we’d thought it was plenty, but given the conditions we’d mentioned earlier, it was no tea party. All copy had to be done by four, so the visuals could be finished by the deadline. Writing copy on timer for an entire campaign from scratch with an impatient art director looking over your shoulder is no fun. Especially when you’re exposed to another 50 people walking behind you all the time. Anyway, the copy was ready by four. Then came the second wave of anxiety with the art part. Brand new Photoshop, with all functions located somewhere else than where you’d expect them to be. Miraculously though, we found ourselves submitting our work at 7, and were happy to leave that hellhole for good.
The Jury Process and the Saddening Results
Having survived the night before, constantly worrying whether your idea is any good, debating with yourself whether you can execute it the way you want to is a nightmare. You’d think that once you’ve finished, the weight would be lifted off your, and you could let it all go. Well, you can’t.
The night after the competition is way worse. You’re questioning each and every line, each and every icon while trying to convince yourself that your work is actually worth something. Ultimately, we started to believe in ourselves, and went to the announcement with high hopes. The Young Lions jury process, contrary to the jury process of the professional festival, is way shorter. Three (yes, so much for diversity) exhausted creative directors show up 8ish in the morning, and are given three hours to comprehend the super-complex brief, and assess 46 (!) submissions. In our humble opinion, it cannot be done. We’re not sure if it was done right. The results came, and we were disappointed, yet, a little relieved. We acknowleged the fact that our work wasn’t good enough and we have plenty to learn in the years to come. However, the day after, when all the work became accessible to us, came the wave of anger. The medalists’ work was not better than ours. The medalists’ work was not on brief. After the first moments of rage, we finally calmed down, and comforted ourselves with the fact that we did our best, and that this competition may not be as professional as we’d expected.
Cannes-clusion
( Yeah, we know, sorry) All in all, Cannes was a blast. We would love to return next year. And the year after. As a creative, the festival gives you a shot of inspiration that you’ll be digesting for weeks after you’ve returned. However, as with all good things, there’s always a ‘but’. As inspiring and mesmerising as Cannes is, in the disguise of rosé, chinos and the squawking of seagulls, it’s still a game of money. You can win. Anyone can win. As long as you can afford to nominate your work. Big agencies, big clients, big names: they aren’t necessarily better. But they have the money and the infrastructure. Winning lions from the US and they UK may seem easy.
Winner toolkit
From Hungary, well, there’s still so much to do. We need real problems based on valid insights, future-oriented and reasonable clients, brave creative leaders, a willing management, loads of good ideas, and tonnes of money. Should we be lucky enough to have just two from this list, we will return.
Not as cubs. As roaring, determined kings and queens of the jungle.