McCann goofs again. Sorrell’s a comedian. Just another year at Cannes.

No one can accuse Michael Roth of free spending with IPG money. The holding-company CEO ordered a “special meal” at Howard Draft’s annual Hotel du Cap lunch, but it isn’t as precious as you might think. Instead of the fancy French cuisine and wine that the rest of the crew was gorging on, Roth, explaining that he’s more of a meat-and-potatoes guy, chowed on a cheeseburger and fries. • McCann recovered from one gaffe only to stumble into another. Ditching the extravagance of a yacht party on the Christina O, which they got shit for last year (following IPG’s billionth restatement), the agency hosted a more subdued party this year that raised money for Doctors without Borders to boot! Nice touch, boys. But then the chuckleheads didn’t invite one of their biggest clients who were in town (yeah, all together now) to spend time with their agencies. We know this ticked off said client, because they complained to us about it. Note to McCann: Whip out your client list, remember who was in Cannes, figure out who you dissed, and start doing a little of this. • Some clients have impressive stamina, but wield it for different purposes. The cool ones, like the Adidas client, were hanging out at the Carlton Terrace until the wee hours. The pain-in-the-ass clients, like Diamond Trading Co., chose to torture their agency by having a nine-hour meeting. Nine hours! In Cannes! And then some of the poor bastards in the meeting got dragged out to dinner afterward. That’s just mean. • Speaking of Adidas: Unlike the ingrate Richard Branson of Virgin, who practically put his account into review on stage while accepting his Advertiser of the Year award a few years back, Ulrich Becker of Adidas not only thanked his agencies (including TBWA and 180) by name but cited some key agency execs, also by name. It made the acceptance speech a bit longer, but for good reason. I may hang up my Nikes. • Martin Sorrell has a sense of humor. Who knew? During a nearly seven-minute presentation at WPP’s “Evening of Pecha Kucha” (which means “chit chat” in Japanese), Sir Martin poked fun at his own reputation by declaring his hatred for everything, from clients to creatives to Shelly Lazarus to WPP board members to “something called the work/life balance.” His ideal board? Poodles. Specifically, “two executive poodles, two independent poodles and me.” His ideal creative department? A machine into which clients would feed briefs and receive a campaign. But his ultimate dream, he anounced, was to pool all clients and all accounts into one giant global campaign with the slogan, “Buy more stuff.” Naturally, he said, “it’s a WPP account.”—Posted by Team CannesPhoto: Eric Tu

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McCann goofs again. Sorrell’s a comedian. Just another year at Cannes.

Catharine P. Taylor

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Catharine P. Taylor