Most of the talk this week, at least amongst North Americans, is the extraordinary cost of things this year in Cannes. The Euro is dwarfing our dollar to the point that it won’t be automatic that North American agencies attend next year, at least in the numbers they have this year. Hotels, meals and taxis have essentially doubled in price since last year. The price of gas in France is well over the top, like everywhere else (the equivalent to $5.50 a gallon). A taxi from the airport in Nice set you back around 45 euros a year ago—this year its easily 85. (That’s $132 dollars for my friends in Accounting.) For a half-hour cab ride! Oh, those French. So there’s chatter around the bars that agencies won’t be able to send big groups to the awards next year.
There’s also lots of chatter about the hotel rooms—more specifically the lack of them. If you didn’t register early this year, you got shut out. I spoke to several people who are either staying 10k up the coast (hello Taxis) or renting apartments for the week because they registered too late. Those of us lucky enough to get proper rooms are paying the equivalent of $800 a night for a small, old room with 2 english-speaking TV channels (you can choose between BBC 1 or BBC World), inadequate air conditioning and no shower. (Seems the French take a lot of baths.) It being a creative festival, however, there have been reports of hair washing in bidets.
The Integrated & Titanium category was created a few years ago to recognize work that didn’t really fit anywhere else. Big ideas that transcend the normal definitions. This, by the way, is the dream of all promotions: to permeate the conciousness and “take over” the hearts and minds of consumers, at least for a little while. Last Year, Vegaolmosponce (that’s not a typo, it’s a bunch of guys names from Buenos Aires) won the Integrated Grand Prix for their Axe work. Their idea, mixing two Axe products together attracts a mix of gorgeous women, saturated multiple mediums with the message, and hit consumers everywhere they looked. Big, original idea. Here’s the line from their entry I love: “ . . . we came up with a simple, straightforward and 100% Axe media-neutral idea.” They used TV, of course, but also national print, radio, web, buildings, subways and street teams to underscore their message. Media-neutral. It’s the dream, boys and girls. Your big idea, writ large.
This year’s shortlist includes a surprising range of clients and products, including 11 charities out of the 33 entries. This is a big trend this year: charity work earning top prizes. But why? Is it that the “clients” are less critical and easier to persuade to do breakthrough work? Or is it because a great goodwill idea is easier for the community (and media) to rally around? We were instructed as a Jury last year not to award a Grand Prix to a charity, on the basis that they have an unfair advantage because there’s no product to sell. Perhaps they should have their own category, to even out the competition. In the meantime, there are some breakthrough ideas vying for the title. HBO’s voyeur, of course, but also “Welcome Snoop” from MTV Australia, wherein the banned-from-Australia Snoop Dog sits in a boat in the Melbourne harbor threatening to come back; memorable work for Halo 3, where a futuristic war photographer commemorates the Halo battles via stunning black and white photography; and from New Zealand, a very funny campaign for Speight’s beer, which, since it’s not available in the UK, built an actual tavern, and hired actual kiwis to man it, then put it on a barge and floated it over to England in time for the Cup. (Take a breath. I believe that it is the longest sentence I’ve ever written.) The Whopper Freakout, from Crispin, which created a rumor that the Whopper was retired, then filmed people’s reactions to it, could earn them a second Titanium in a row, after last year’s Xbox King Games event.
Some of these programs won Promo Lions already this year. Some didn’t bother with the category and earned Press or Outdoor honors instead. All of them are worth examining, because they are original ideas (stories, to use the current buzzphrase, the very title of seminars given by both Crispin & Wieden) that interrupt not only their cultures but this very awards show as well. The agencies that fill this shortlist are the best in our business; very few of them list “promotions” as one of their capabilities. Crispin, Wieden, Saatchi, McCann, JWT, Goodby. They all get the power of 360 marketing and are doing something about it.
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