Wednesday 4:38 pm

The obvious, Cannes is beautiful. But, if you haven’t been here, it’s surprisingly small, so when the Advertising Festival hits town, you see advertising people everywhere. It’s like one big ad agency with a bunch of tourists mixed in.

The Americans and the English especially like staying on the boulevard, in storied hotels like The Majestic, The Carlton, The Martinez and The Palais des Festivals. Big names, big hotels. Big histories. An apt metaphor for our traditional perception of where famous advertising comes from. But a lot of the work is coming from places a lot less traditional. (I’ll get to that later)

Yes, I stopped by the Carlton last night (no I’m not staying there), but the bar was humming. Saw friends from Cole & Weber United, caught up briefly with Michael McLaren and Matt Ross (McCann Worldwide Account Director and Managing Director of McCann San Francisco-hopefully here to pick up a lot of hardware for the Halo launch) and Michael Roth (you know, chairman of IPG and the guy on those ethics courses you probably still need to do). Headhunters mingle with creatives on the deck, and out-of-pitch live music plays on public docks across the boulevard. Companies from Getty Images to Microsoft sponsor everything along the waterfront. (It’s an advertising festival after all) Even Argentina is a brand here, with a sign proudly plastered across the festival hall. Groups break up and head for dinner, the restaurants are open air, and television screens show Italy and France playing soccer. You can hear the whole city groan and cheer when something happens. I don’t know how the match ended up (you can ask Oakley if you’re curious), but Italy was up 1-0 when I finally gave up watching.

But back to the festival. It’s hard to believe that not that many years ago, the US and England seemed to dominate, and the rest of the world came to watch and hopefully sneak a few Lions home. But the work is coming from amazing places, and when you look, you can see (and feel) the passion, and enthusiasm for the ideas and execution, in all mediums, from places like Johannesburg, Mumbai (heard of the agency FP7? Me neither, but they’re worth paying attention to), Seoul, Dubai and Sao Paolo (I don’t know what they’re drinking down there, but we should get some.)

Besides the media and cyber categories, one of the most interesting categories was the outdoor category. Our work for Nationwide “Coop’s Paint” was short-listed but no Lion. BBDO’s Voyeur won the Grand Prix, but there was a lot of cool work done in that category. Television and Cyber Lion shortlists will be announced later this week.

It’s inspiring to be around the work and the attendees here. Saw Bob Greenburg from RG/A present with the Chief of Brand Connections from Nike (very cool, but that’s a note in itself).There’s a common theme from the winners to the presenters. All it takes is powerful, simple ideas, elegantly but single-mindedly executed in surprising ways (and places). And there is definitely a trend toward work that involves the viewer, not just work that “inspires” them. More evidence that our positioning, “Ideas that Change Cultures” is spot on. And with new mediums, new technologies and new passionate people coming into our business, it’s an exciting time to be around. Time to raise our game. It’s going to be fun and a wild ride.

And Cannes is a reminder that sometimes you need to get out of the traditional places, do a little exploring and try something new.

Jim Walker, Executive Creative Director

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