Screen Africa is represented at Cannes Lions this year by Pam Marsh who will file a personal view of what’s happening in the Palais de Festivals and on the famous boulevarde Croisette. Here is her first update.
With the bombardment of information and the awarding of Lions, what have I learnt so far this week?
That if Facebook was a country it would be the 4th largest in the world. That 734 million people use social media. 99% of brands aren’t using social media! The future of profit is purpose. Advertisers must become architects of the community. Consumers now co-author the stories we tell.
As usual, it has been mindblowing.
We (the audience) helped vote for the “Greatest Sales Person in the World’, a concept run by OgilvyOne – underlining that selling is still key to advertising. We heard a seminar by David Harris, Executive Creative Director of Wunderman on “Where does inspiration come from?’ He left us with this thought: Inspiration has to overcome the inertia of the current truth.
South Africa has done fairly well in the awards so far, six Lions for radio and 5 Lions for Outdoor – only one Gold so far to Y&R for Xbox Outdoor. However we have come nowhere on Activation and my belief is that this is the future of advertising. We’ll see what happens with Cyber tonight. Damon Stapleton of TBWA Hunt Lascaris believes that: It is all about connection not about a style i.e. TV/radio, it’s about how we integrate it.
There was no government spending at Cannes this year, so thanks to some very fast thinking and great energy (mostly from CapeTown), the South Africans vuvuzella’d Cannes into madness yesterday! They turned Morrisons pub into South Africa house and had a blast for the soccer (excuse the pun, see picture!).
Ben Stiller amused us at a seminar rub by Yahoo! In fact this was disruption at its best, please log onto: www.stillerstrong.org. For every click on the photo (yes, I am in it!), Yahoo! will donate a dollar to rebuilding a school in Haiti, they are looking for $50 000.
I’ll leave you with one more thought from Simon Mainwaring, whose seminar was called: The how of Social Media – Reverse everything you know about advertising!
