Andy Flemming’s Cannes Diary: Day Whatever

Andy Flemming, creative director at M&C Saatchi Sydney is in Cannes. He writes exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Note: These are in no particular day order and span a few days. Fuck it.

3:00am England lost to Italy. This resulted in a very large Italian, man running around the Irish pub we were in screaming loudly. He shouted ‘Italia! into my face whilst banging his fist on the table. I smiled and nodded enthusiastically so he’d think I was Italian too. He ran off to hassle someone else so I managed to slip out and walk back to the ‘hotel’ miserably.

5:00pm Campaign Brief welcome drinks at the Grand Hotel. As I walked up the path I took a salmon and cheese canapé from a smartly dressed waiter. When I mentioned Campaign Brief he realised I was at the wrong party and tried to take it back off me. I stuffed it into my mouth and ran off towards John Mescall who’d just won another Lion. Getting a Lion was the sole topic of conversation for one of the guests I spoke to. Who won a Lion, how many Lions they got and how many Lions he was expecting to win. If I had a Lion I would have hit him with it, only I don’t have a fucking Lion. I managed to get a couple of words with the legendary Matt Eastwood before he was carried away by an admiring mob.

9:00am There’s been a bit of an international incident between me and the guy who owns the launderette. He wanted to charge me 363 Euros for spending two days ironing four shirts. I worked out that this was close to 180 dollars. I got angry and started shouting ‘expensive’ in a French accent as I think they use the same word. It turns out that in France they stick an E at the end of all the prices, so the actual cost was 36E. I thought it was Cyrillic or something. I got the shirts back after he made me wait twenty minutes as some sort of punishment.

9:30 I saw a delegate having coffee with a Lion on his table. Seriously. I presume he’s either been out all night or he’s trying to get laid.

9:45 Old ladies queuing outside Prada. Seriously. Queuing.

10:00am The French like to package things up in the chemists so you can’t buy one toothbrush; you have to buy about six. The girl at the counter an I shared a ‘raised eye’ moment as she scanned a huge shrink-wrapped collection of multicoloured condom boxes for the embarrassed guy in front of me. He wasn’t good looking or anything and points for being safe and all that – but there were about eighty in there. Maybe there’s some sort of massive sex party going on. I wouldn’t know. I only have one wristband.

10:05am ‘The Power Of Dreams.’ Repeat this phrase a few times; add words like disruption, content and social and you’ve got yourself a Cannes seminar. Throw in a celebrity and you’ll have them queuing down the Croisette. Kanye and Kim are in town apparently. There’s a gigantic yacht the size of the Queen Mary moored off the beach. Helicopters keep landing on it so we all assumed it was theirs. I now understand it belongs to The Daily Mail. I should buy a fucking long lens and try and snap them topless on the bow. Fuck it. That’s what they do.

2:00pm I’m writing some scripts for Sydney at Google Beach. I managed to slip past the huge Irish security guard and run upstairs to a very Googly room filled with multicoloured cushions and Lego. A couple of cool hipsters were making music on an elaborate music app. They had more wristbands than me. I have two now. But one of them’s paper and you get at the front entrance. It has Google’s Wi-Fi password on it. I might keep it on. Everyone seems to collect them like those New Orleans Mardi Gras beads.

11:30am I’m on a boat with Paul Nagy, absolutely one of the nicest guys in advertising. We’re off to ‘Google Beach’ where a whole pile of people will be talking about YouTube.

5:30pm I saw Jared Leto walking outside the venue so I pretended to slip off to the toilet so I could get a selfie with him. I’ve no idea why I’m collecting these but they’re fun. I’ve sort of quickly rehearsed what I was going to say to one of the coolest men on the planet to get the shot, and it was ‘excuse me Jared, do you mind me being a wanker and getting a shot with you?’ When I approached the Oscar-winning Jesus lookalike I got a bit star struck and fucked it up, so what he would have seen was a large and obviously nervous man walking over to him saying ‘Excuse me, I’m a wanker’ and sticking a phone in his face. He gave me a big thumbs-up in the shot. Bless him. I think he might have been scared.

6:00pm Back on the boat with Paul Nagy. The Google thing was amazing and they gave us a goody bag at the end with cool stuff in it. This is definitely their year at Cannes. They’ve just owned it. Facebook and Twitter are nowhere to be seen and all the Microsoft stickers are peeling off.

1:00am The Carlton Terrace. Remember the Big Day Out when a headline band’s on? Imagine being in the middle of that crowd only it’s not Arcade Fire you’re facing, it’s a bar.

2:30am I’m at quite a famous music party on the beach. I managed to get an invite from my sister who seems to have invites for everything. The music’s awful and the beer’s run out so we’re all drinking wine from beakers. I’ll pay for this tomorrow, so I’ll probably talk to you Friday yeah?

Read Andy’s first day in Cannes diary. Also very funny.