Influential speakers share insights at Cannes Lions 2013
Thursday, 20 June 2013 00:37
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Leo Burnett’s Michael reports from 60th Cannes Lions
The third day at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world’s largest advertising festival, was one of the most memorable ones to date! We were able to secure metal for Sri Lanka in the Media Lions Category for the Unity Paper which is a real boost for our creative industry. The competition gets tougher every year, and Ranil, Subhash, Eraj, Indu and I were all ecstatic when we heard Sri Lanka being announced at the awards ceremony!
I think this is just the beginning of Sri Lanka’s creative career, as we know there will be more creativity and award winning pieces coming from Sri Lanka in these global award shows. Our fate in our second shortlist in the Design Lions category will be decided on Thursday when they announce the winners, we shall cross our fingers and hope for the best for Sri Lanka.
This year we have a stellar line up of influential speakers, there was a seminar from Google on ‘Taking Moonshots, Telling Stories’. Moonshots are seemingly impossible to obtain obviously and yet the impossibility is important for ideas that in turn enable us to evolve through science, technology and creativity and all this can be brought to reality by being daring and overcoming fear.
Simply speaking, a moonshot is a powerful idea that can solve a very big and important problem in the world. It is called a moonshot because when we sent people to the moon in 1966 it made people believe that anything is possible. That is why moonshot is now becoming very important to progress in the world. The theory revolves around two things.
Firstly what is the problem and how can we solve it exponentially (it is not about making a car travel 30 kilometres more on a litre of fuel but how can you make a car that runs 500 kilometres on a litre of fuel. The second and bigger thing is how you create a story about the value to the human race. So in the future, when we want really solve big problems for clients we will ignite a moonshot!
One of my favourites for the day was a seminar by SapientNitro on ‘Stories are more than a narrative. And fashion is more than design’. We got to see the inimitable and enduring Queen of British Fashion, Dame Vivienne Westwood, and listen to an engaging discussion and exploration on how revolutionary stories are told in every space, from fashion to business and how they become global movements. Following which the day concluded with the live seminar from our network, Leo Burnett and Contagious on ‘How brands can embrace miraculous new technologies to create small wonders that will change our daily lives’.
In the year that Cannes celebrates its 60th anniversary, the Wildfire seminar looked 60 months into the future giving us delegates a head-start on the most significant technological innovations that they believe will redefine how brands connect with people. The seminar explored how technology can be applied to the natural cadence of our daily lives in order to make routine activities and behaviours more streamlined, meaningful or entertaining. It was a future where brands are ideally positioned to create the kinds of small and vital wonders that we soon won’t imagine being able to live without.
For the 60th Cannes Lions, the team introduced online viewing of one seminar a day for the public, each seminar was decided following an online vote and the most popular seminar each day is to be screened. Today at 7:30 p.m. local time, you can visit www.canneslions.com and watch a Denstu seminar on ‘Happy Hacking: Redefining the Co-Creation Frontier’.
Yesterday, Cannes had its very first China Day! The advertising sector is one of the fastest growing industries in China; as is evident in the last few years, which we can now see in the advertising spend in China which has ranked at number two in the world at $ 53 billion. In the last few years we have also seen China flex its muscles in terms of creativity, winning numerous Lions at Cannes including a Press Lions Grand Prix in 2011 and an Outdoor Lions Grand Prix in 2012.
The potential of the market is huge, and the need to understand the market is significant. Cannes Lions bought China Day to the festival this year which gave us the opportunity to see how some of China’s leading thinkers, thought leaders and experts in creativity, the internet, cultural understanding, and marketing put together in a series of sessions which we got to attend, amazing how a country has evolved. It was interesting to see what was really happening in this vast country.
At the end of an eventful day there was the awards show for media, outdoor and effectiveness. Once again the big players took home the major awards but this year yet again there have been more surprises by countries that have never been up on that stage before picking up gold and grand prix! DM9 JaymeSyfu rewrote the record books for the Philippines’ creativity by winning the country’s first ever Grand Prix in Mobile, huge congratulations to the team, I think anything is possible!
Following on there was the opening gala party which went on till late. We had a ball of a time with the delegates here! Eraj, Indu and myself will be updating you’ll with our experiences at Cannes each day including the announcements of the finalists and winners.
