Cannes Day Two: Beyond the awards

PaulYole, head of strategy at The Brand Agency, has been a delegate inCannes for the past five years. Here’s his ‘beyond the awards’ take onthe second day in Cannes…

I think I could make money here teaching presentation skills but there was some decent content today.

Talkingof content, I put the Wankometer into action and counted that C word 51times – yes 51 – during the first presentation. And I lost count of howmany times they said, “the online space”. God help us.

Interesting and frightening that the Nokia marketing planner DanielGoodall; said, “It’s important for Nokia to make sure we don’t use justone source for content creation.”

Rory Sutherland was good as always. “Human desire doesn’t necessarilytranslate into action.” A timely reminder about the importance ofsalesmanship.

JWT showed some great work, especially for Heineken’s ‘Are you stillwith us?’ campaign. Check this out – I’ve included some French wordsfor authenticity….

David Harris from Wunderman is not a brilliant presenter but what hedelivered was great. He has done research into how inspiration happensand somewhat perversely came up with a formula for the process:

Problem

Thinking time

Dispersal

The trigger

Epiphany

Communicating the idea

Finished off the day with drinks on the Carlton terrace. Met Nick Lawsas well as old friends Stu (Mills) and Yanti from Ogilvy & TBWA Singapore respectively. It’sYanti’s birthday today so I think a big night is ahead. We’ll probablyend up at the newly sponsored Yahoo Gutter Bar. I took a photo on mymorning run.