The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity descended upon the south of France in person last week, after a three-year hiatus, to honor some of the marketing and advertising industry’s most outstanding work. While touring the mega beach activations and chatting with marketing executives, we noticed a key through line: It’s back to business, folks—but it’s also time to celebrate.

We noticed more open floor plans conducive to creative discussions and cutting deals, more top-notch entertainment than in years prior, as well as some newcomers, like Reddit, showing up strong for brand creatives for the first time. As Keyana Kashfi, Spotify’s Global Experiential Content & Production Lead, put it, “2019 was very focused on sales meetings. The biggest structures you saw here [in our footprint] were three closed-door meeting rooms. It was a decision to make sure we had spaces to meet and have conversations, but really focus on the celebration of being back.”

“It has been a heavy time, and it still is a heavy time, but at least we could be together and celebrate the good things—and talk out some of the more uncomfortable things,” she continued. “We wanted to have more open spaces to congregate… and use this time to celebrate being back, being out and to celebrate creativity.” Check out this photo tour of the brand activations at Cannes this year—and stay tuned for a full field report in sister pub Event Marketer on what we experienced along the Croisette.

Cannes Lions is also about the awards, of course. So we also picked the brain of one of the boldest risk-takers in consumer health marketing at the moment: Patricia Corsi, Global Chief Marketing & Digital Officer at Bayer Consumer Health. Tackling the taboo surrounding conversations about women’s intimate health, Corsi created an educational, entertaining, influencer- and expert-led campaign on TikTok for the global brand Canesten dubbed the “Vagina Academy.” Explore the brand’s journey through developing the campaign, its strategic marketing goals, obstacles encountered along the way—including censorship—and the importance of taking risks within the consumer health category.

Until next week,

Kaylee Hultgren
Group Content Manager
Chief Marketer

If you would like to sponsor this e-newsletter please contact Dara Brooks at [email protected] or call (203) 899-8494.