Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2012

By Sachin Ambekar Leo Burnett Solutions Inc. Chief Creative Officer Reporting from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2012

Day Four: The fourth day at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world’s largest advertising festival was just as eventful as the days past!  The spirit of the festival is still high with every delegate completely immersed in the activities here. There are more and more people joining us at the Festival every day. Cannes has received the maximum number of entries this year with more than 33,000 from all over the world. It is evident that agencies are becoming more competitive and coming up with new innovative ways everyday to communicate and engage consumers.  You can only imagine the tough competition everyone is facing.

It is amazing to see Sri Lanka suddenly come up on the charts at Cannes. This is only the beginning from us as I forecast that the world will be seeing many more pieces from Sri Lankan agencies taking centre stage at international competitions. What is most satisfying and gratifying for Leo Burnett                Sri Lanka is that our win was a fight against international giants with massive budgets; our idea did not just survive against global agencies it won metal!

Yesterday there were a couple of very interesting seminars. One was by Twitter on ‘Harnessing the Power of Real-Time Connections’. The speaker Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO spoke to us about how twitter is changing the world and how the advertising industry can benefit from it. We had an informative discussion on how planning for real-time can both inform and transform the way campaigns are crafted both online and offline.

The second very interesting seminar was by Xbox Live on interactive entertainment and the next chapter. Interactive TV is here to stay. Technology consumers now use more natural actions to interact with their TV sets. It is the ultimate creative canvas for content providers, game developers and brands. More importantly is the transformation of the way interactive entertainment is enjoyed today and there is so much room for us to explore more interactive and engaging mediums.  

The other session which I loved was by Nike and R/GA on ‘Building a New Ecosystem for Consumer Experience’. Nike showed us their latest innovation in sports. R/GA the digital agency showed us some of the outstanding digital ideas for their products. The company is expanding their digital sport portfolio and we got to listen to how they are building and launching this new consumer ecosystem.

Then came the anticipated award show for print, cyber, radio and design. It seems that the borders between these mediums are blurring out. Design had some powerful ideas from Japan and Europe. Cyber is growing 10 fold every year and some of the ideas we saw were out of this world. Radio was dominated by US and South Africa and is probably the only traditional medium that is still in its pure form. Some funny spots from CPB and WK took the metal and Grand Prix. Print was another massive category and there were a lot of awards given to agencies on the night. The majority of print entries were combined with digital and activation ideas. It is clear that digital and activation have changed the face of this medium.

At the end I attended an exemplary party by Times of India where I was able to have some India food and drinks with some of my old friends. Chrishani, Rameez and Dhanushka had an eventful evening at a party here. We are all thoroughly enjoying this experience and learning new things everyday!

I will be giving you my last update on Tuesday with overview of all the experiences at Cannes! And most importantly updating you on President Bill Clinton’s speech! It’s going to be sensational!