I’m working, honestly: Paul Yole’s Cannes diary
Day 2 – Monday: First up today was a tour around the finalists in press, outdoor, media, direct, promo and PR. Some stunningly visual work.
Go Viral’s Jimmy Maymann gave us a 40-minute tour of the digital space. By next year, it seems, we will be spending more hours online than watching TV and the fastest growing segment online is video. Indeed, video is expected to represent 64% of all mobile traffic by 2013.
Jimmy showed us an interesting piece for Tampax, which is a series of films relating the story of Zack Johnson, paradoxically a 16 year old boy who ……. well, have a look and see at www.zack16.com Interesting, but with no paid media support they have only had 100,000 views.
It all seems to be about ‘new’ media this year. I crave to hear someonelike Chuck Porter showing us some ads because after all, we still spendabout 80% of our clients’ media budgets offline.
In any case,Universal McCann hosted a good array of speakers from UM, Microsoft andFacebook. (By the way thanks to the commentator who gave the tip aboutposting Twitter and Facebook updates simultaneously. I did know that,but it takes the fun away!)
The theme of their seminar was’Gravitational media’ (the new buzz phrase for 09) and they used lotsof physics analogies to explain how bodies attract bodies and howmomentum is derived from mass x velocity. You knew that, right?
Anyway,Facebook now has 307 million users and still grew by 164% last year. Iguess that equals momentum. Twitter on the other hand grew by 1900% butstill has only 32 million users.
Last up, the co-founder of Twitter,Biz Stone. Very inspirational even if some of us can’t yet see how itwill monetise and some others “can’t see the point”. Biz got a fullhouse and a standing ovation.
If you don’t know the story, Twitterbelieves that as a two year old company, they are only “1% into thisjourney”. They’ve just turned down an offer of US$500 million becausethey want to focus on “building a company of enduring value”. Theystill have only 50 staff.
You have to admire the guy, even if youare a Twitter cynic. When he turns 30 he will probably do quite well.Two departing thoughts from Biz:
First, a definition of Twitter -“for sharing and discovering what’s happening right now”. They brokethe story of the last California earthquake 9 minutes before any newsmedia.
Second, how do you explain to a company what Twitter is? Justput their name into search and show what people are tweeting aboutthem. Then the company will want to know how to respond. Simple – signup and answer the critics.