THE OTHER SIDE OF CANNES – PART 4

Paul Yole, Strategic Planning Director of The Brand Agency sends his blog from the Lions.

The problem with any conference (or festival) is that not all of the presentations are going to be brilliant. In fact, a lot of them are quite ordinary and the trouble is you don’t discover this until it’s too late and you’re trapped in the middle of a row.

This was the case for most of the first two days here until Nick Moore from Wunderman stepped up to the plate. After suffering two days of boring digital clichés (content anyone?), Nick came to our rescue with a refreshingly simple outline of what is needed in today’s world of communications.

Basically, he told us, the effect of the world wide web is that whether we like it or not, people will talk about us. Nick’s solution is that instead of a ‘fire and forget’ strategy we should adopt a 5 point plan. 1) Actively listen to what people are saying, 2) join and lead a conversation with them, 3) become a topic of conversation ourselves, 4) let go of control and 5) create many, endless conversations.

Of course I can’t really do justice to the full impact of Nick’s talk in a blog like this but if you want to see an example of what he’s talking about, go and have a look at the most successful new brand launch of the last 18 months – the brand of Barack Obama – and how he really milked the power of both online and offline media.

Josh Edge from The Brand Agency was the only person I know who managed to get into the Berlin School’s workshop on creative leadership and he reckons it was inspirational. Actually, I think Dav from 303 may have got into it too.

There was a lot of networking last night, so I was slaving away until 3.30am. I think we are getting value for our money.