Riviera Rendezvous

The 52nd International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, which kicked off yesterday with several seminars and the briefing for the Young Creatives Print and Cyber Competitions, promises to be a fun-, sun- and work-filled week celebrating the industry's best work. The festival expects about 9,000 visitors this year, according to Terry Savage, CEO of the IAF. Registration numbers are expected to show an increase of 12 percent to 14 percent over last year, with delegation numbers reaching about 7,500. Entries to the seven Lion competitions —including a new contest, the Radio Lions, and a revamped one, Titanium Lions for Integrated Campaigns—are up 18 percent to 22,101, according to the festival organization. The higher numbers in attendance and competition participation indicate that the global advertising community is feeling a little healthier these days, says Savage. "Ultimately, we're a reflection of the industry," he explains. "It has to be that the industry is undergoing better times than the previous years."The increase in delegates can in part be attributed to the steady growth of client attendance. The festival estimates that 150 brands will be represented in Cannes this year, with executives from Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Yum! Brands, Nestlé, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Walt Disney and Heineken among those expected to make the trip. In 2003, approximately 65 brands attended, and that number grew to 105 last year, Savage says."Cannes is very much more becoming a kind of meeting place, working space for the advertising community and marketers," says John Hunt, worldwide creative director of TBWA and president of the Film and Press & Outdoor juries (see sidebar, page 26). "I think that the [influx of clients] can only be good. It becomes their show as well. Cannes is having a bit of a sea change."P&G, which made its first trip to Cannes in 2003 and helped spark the increased client interest, is back in full force this week with about 30 representatives from around the globe. "We want to continue to learn and to be inspired by the best work," says Stephen Squire, director of advertising development at P&G. The yearly pilgrimage has paid off for the Cincinnati-based packaged goods company, says Squire. Pointing to Pampers and Tampax as just two of its brands that have benefited from the excursions, Squire says P&G has more than 200 entries in contention this year, compared to about a handful five years ago. "It's about bringing back that learning and improving the quality of the creative."Esther Lee, CCO of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, will be attending for the second year in a row. Her reasons for attending with her team: "To stay current on great work from around the world, to keep our own thinking fresh with inputs from outside our four walls and to live in the world of creative ideas and execution for a few days, and to connect with our agency partners from around the world," she says. While Lee says she is looking forward to seeing the work in each competition, she is particularly interested in the out-of-home and interactive work. "A lot of invention is taking place in these areas, and they will be more important for marketers as we evolve out of a 30-second TV world," she explains.Entry gains reflect the increased industry focus on categories outside of TV and film executions. In one of the first signs at Cannes that commercial production may be suffering at the expense of alternative media solutions, the film competition, which is as old as the festival itself, is showing a 2 percent decrease in entry numbers to 4,996. The largest entry growth is in the 4-year-old direct-marketing competition, with a nearly 34 percent increase to 1,614 submissions. Media Lions, introduced in 1999, is up 23 percent to 1,076, and entries in the Cyber Lions, introduced in 1998, are up nearly 22 percent to 1,897. Press & Outdoor entries rose 16 percent in outdoor to 4,667, and 12 percent in press to 6,699. To handle the submissions increases, the festival added 12 members to the in Press & Outdoor, Cyber and Media Lions juries.The inaugural Radio Lions competition has 1,020 entries. And Titanium Lions, relaunched as a formal contest this year to honor integrated campaigns, has 133 entries. Winners in both those competitions will be honored at the final awards show of the week, the Film, Radio Lions & Titanium Lions Awards ceremony at the Palais des Festivals. The two new contests were added to address the importance of an established category of advertising long-ignored in Cannes—radio—and what is largely considered to represent the future of advertising—integrated media. "It was righting a wrong," says Savage of the introduction of Radio. "Integrated is simply about the festival ... keeping in the pace with the industry."The Titanium award has been reinvented this year. The brainchild of Dan Wieden, who was the Film and Press & Outdoor jury president in 2003, the Titanium Lion was introduced to reward groundbreaking, innovative concepts. The only Titanium ever awarded went to Fallon in Minneapolis and Optimedia in New York that year for BMW's "The Hire." This year, it has been relaunched as an integrated campaign competition, with its own entries and a panel of judges. To qualify, an entry has to have included three distinct communication channels—both traditional and non-traditional. Awards will be given out in four categories based on media budget, from $1 million to more than $50 million. "That's where the industry is heading ... working with companies that have multi-touch points across many disciplines," says Savage.Titanium Lions jury president Jeff Goodby says the new configuration makes more sense. "It takes into account the changes in the business," he says. "The old way of judging didn't take into account the holistic approach, the way we have to think going forward."Will judging creative in media categories seem dated in the coming years? "I guess this is the best target we can give it at the moment because you do need to celebrate that one good thing," says Hunt. "Advertising is in transit; it's really a work in progress." John Hunt, TBWA worldwide creative director and jury president of this year's Film and Press & Outdoor competitions, doesn't like to use the word "creativity" much. "I hate it," Hunt says. "It's so abused." So when asked what he will be looking for when reviewing the more than 16,000 entries in his categories, he says the answer is simple: "The original idea, beautifully expressed."It may be a clichéd des-cription, he says, but the Lion-winning ads need no fancy dressings. "I much prefer the stronger idea versus the lush production values. I'm not one for post-production pyrotechnics. Often, the more it goes that way, the more it leaves me cold," he says. "I think most judges would agree. So, it's more about size of idea rather than budget."The 50-year-old, founding partner of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in South Africa, should know. Last year, TBWA was the most-awarded network at Cannes. The agency won 41 Lions across all competitions, including the Grand Prix in film, which went to TBWA London for PlayStation's "Mountain." "It's gotta be relevant, but unexpectedly so," says Hunt, who won two Gold Lions for BMW in 1992, one for a spot about a mouse driving the car and another showing a mercury drop travelling over a naked body. The right mix is what separates the good from the great. "If it's too relevant, you'll probably be putting us to sleep. If it's unexpected—it's really great to have a gorilla in a jock strap bouncing around the screen—but if he's not selling some related product ... We try to navigate between the relevant and the unexpected."Born in Zambia and schooled in England and South Africa, Hunt has spent most of his career in South Africa, except for a recent stint in New York, where he was working out of the agency's headquarters following his appointment as global creative chief in April 2003. He still spends time in the New York office, most recently assisting on Nextel, but moved back to South Africa with his wife and three children late last year.While Hunt is most excited these days by ideas that transcend media conventions, such as the live Adidas billboard from TBWA in Tokyo, Hunt's creative endeavors extend beyond advertising. An avid collector of African art, Hunt is also an accomplished screenwriter and playwright. Among his accolades, including an induction into the South African Advertising Hall of Fame in 1996, is a Playwright of the Year honor received for Vid Alex, a play condemning censorship during apartheid. In fact, Hunt says his most rewarding experience in advertising was working on Nelson Mandela's presidential election campaign in 1993. "I don't know if he made my copywriting any better, but it maybe changed my views a little," he says. "Maybe you reassess some values, and what's important and what's not—that sort of thing." In his global agency role, Hunt keeps tabs on creative from all corners of the world, but if he has any recent favorites, he's not talking about them pre-Cannes. "If I had, I wouldn't tell you," says Hunt. Winning a Cannes Lion is no small feat, when considering the average. "I'm afraid to say that I still think 85 percent of all advertising is crap," he says. "What happens in the top 2 percent of that 15 is where the game is played, particularly in Cannes. The top 2 percent is, holy shit, I never saw that coming! That was clever."

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Riviera Rendezvous

Eleftheria Parpis

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Eleftheria Parpis