Fascinated by Cannes Lions and what it’s about
Over the past two days I have become beyond-normally fascinated with the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Yesterday morning a spent two hours or so watching 5 minute long videos of their presenters, and this morning I’m spending time on Summize and created a Tinker page to follow the activity.
The conference fascinates me because it’s bringing together the most influential and creative minds in marketing and advertising from around the world, to sit and talk about what is Advertising today, and what has been successful this past year.
It seems to me however that most of the presenters, submissions and winners are mostly missing the boat. Advertising, as I see it, is totally broken. Spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns that shove their way in front of our eyes simply doesn’t work anymore. Even the cutsy ads that make you smile, do exactly that, make you smile - not more. Not buy the product. Which is the goal, right?
We need to speak directly to the consumer, not on a broad-level, not even on a targeted level, but on a singular and individual level. With advancing technology in mobile phones and proactive engagement of social media we are incrementally sharing our life, in bits and pieces. These bits and pieces, if pulled together and constructed correctly, would paint the picture of our likes and dislikes, passions, world view, beliefs and habits. The winner in marketing will be the one who can take that information and use it to provide extremely relevant offers - offers that I actually care about. Offers on musical artists I love, restaurants that I frequent, events that I pay attention to, and vacations to places that I dream about. This can only be done with technology.
It won’t be Madison Ave, London, or a fancy firm with three last names that figures this out. It will be Silicon Valley. The former are too focused on the $$$ that come with gaining the big accounts, they’re chasing the trend-line, focusing on one-upping the other guy to win the business. Silicon Valley is about thinking 5 years down the line, barely considering what people are doing today - which is the status quo of stagnant thinking.
As a marketer these thoughts excite me, as an entrepreneur these thoughts fire me up. For what could be more exciting than revolutionizing an industry that hasn’t changed in over 100 years? To quote the closing lines of Jerry Maguire’s most famous Mission Statement:
“Let us start a revolution. Let us start a revolution that is not just about basketball shoes, or official licensed merchandise. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships.”
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