Liberté, Égalité, Publicité!
Bonjour and welcome to this special edition of the Quartz Daily Brief for the Cannes ad conference—rather, the 66th Annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2019.
This daily email is your guide to the news and gossip from the center of the ad world, at least for this week. Your correspondents are lifestyle reporter Jenni Avins and finance editor Jason Karaian, who are as comfortable analyzing earnings reports as they are the discussing merits of celebrity-owned rosé. As a bonus, they will be joined later in the week by management reporter Cassie Werber and executive editor Zach Seward. Allez!
Amid scattered clouds, expect a high of 27°C (81°F). Take note: experts recommend reapplying sunscreen every two hours, and using SPF 30 or higher.
Setting the scene
Why are we here? To celebrate creativity, of course, namely with awards announced every night for the most creative, effective marketing campaigns of the year. Here’s the thing: even though the festival added two new award categories, entries for the Lions fell by 4%, and that’s on top of last year’s 20% drop (thanks to Publicis taking 2018 off). Organizers say it’s a case of quality over quantity, but not even people who run advertising conferences can spin it in a positive way. Still, there is a lot of eye-catching work in the running for awards—most experts reckon that Nike’s “Dream Crazy” campaign (with Wieden + Kennedy) will be the biggest winner.
Who are all these people? More than 100 corporate CMOs are speaking at the Palais this year, up from 85 in 2018 and 57 in 2017. The villas and beach houses sponsored by major tech platforms are bigger than ever, and consultancies are aggressively pitching their creative services. These days, Cannes is where you witness the physical manifestation of agencies getting squeezed from all sides. They may act cool, but all those chief creative officers are feeling the heat, both literally and figuratively.
What’s happening where? Don’t say we never did anything nice for you (aside from put together this free newsletter every day). If you want total information awareness about Cannes this week—from the Palais to the port, and up and down the Croisette—consult our one-page Google Doc with links to details of programming for just about every major venue around town.
Bingo! What do CBD, Keanu Reeves, and microinfluencers all have in common? They’re all squares on our fourth-annual Cannes Lions Buzzword Bingo card. (Click here for a larger version.)
What’s going on today
Clean-living Cannes. Corporate sponsors are here for your wellness all week. If you opened this email the second it arrived (hi mom!), you can probably just make it to the Palais for Marketmakers’ 7am 5K run. SoulCycle will be at MediaLink Beach at 7am and 8am every day this week; RSVP and make your front-row request here. If you prefer bikes that move, Adobe has two ride options (at 7am and 9:15am), as well as 7am yoga. For something completely different, tap dance with Braze and the Syncopated Ladies at the FQ Lounge from 7:30am; no special shoes needed.
Today at the Palais. Publicis is back! At 10am, creative chief Nick Law will open the festival with a talk about why companies work better when the creatives run the show. Counterpoint: At 11:15am, the alternative milk magnates from Oatly present “Marketing Departments. Who needs them?” In other counterintuitive programming news, at 11:15am Philip Morris International (and Wyclef Jean) will discuss “Creating a Smoke-Free Future.” (Hint: it’s not a vape-free future.) You probably overpacked for this trip, according to Marie Kondo, who will talk about “Less Stuff. More Joy” at 1:30pm. Tiffany & Co creative chief Reed Krakoff and Trey Laird of Laird + Partners will tell YouTube fashion director Derek Blasberg how they’re reinvigorating the jewelry juggernaut at 3:30pm.
And the winner is… It will be a big night for a lucky few on the shortlists in the Health, Print & Publishing, Outdoor, and Design Lions categories.
Away from the Palais. Diageo CMO Syd Saller will appear on Wake up with The Economist’s first 10:30am panel of the week, along with Verizon’s Diego Scotti and O2’s Nina Bibby. AMA: At noon at WPP Beach, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel will interview Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Stick around afterwards and watch the never-not-working Ryan Seacrest record his podcast at 2pm. Create your own content at Facebook Beach between 1-3pm by getting your aura photographed. (You know you want to!) MediaLink kicks off its Daily Dose series at 3:30pm with chief Michael Kassan hosting Blackish creator Kenya Barris.
Party planner. Happy hour is in the eye of the beholder. Mobile Ventures Summit is offering “cocktails and conversation” aboard the Ocean Sapphire from 9:30am. If you’re saving your strength for later, Hannah Bronfman will DJ and Ciara will play an acoustic set at Spotify’s villa party; MediaLink’s Wenda Harris Millard and Facebook’s Carolyn Everson co-host Girls’ Night Out at Facebook Beach; and MediaLink is also one-third of a power trio, with Condé Nast and Google, co-hosting the Cannes Lions opening party at the new MediaLink Beach next to the Palais.
Seen and heard
We met our favorite influencer (so far) at the AdWeek party last night: Matilda the Westie. She has her own business cards and is here to Instagram Cannes from a canine perspective.
San Francisco-based agency Heat has made an adult-sized playground—dubbed Playdeate—to encourage creativity at the Young Lions School, but there’s no age cutoff.
Unapologetic capitalist session of the day: Making Money is Art, Good Business is the Best Art
The boats are buffed and await your arrival!
Haiku of the day
Cannes Blanc White Party.
Quite self-explanatory:
wear white. Don’t drink red.
News from around the world
Hong Kong’s protesters forced the government to backtrack. The city’s chief said she would indefinitely suspend a bill allowing the extradition of suspects to mainland China. Hong Kong still saw another massive protest yesterday calling for the bill to be totally withdrawn, amid anger over police use of force. In unusual timing, Joshua Wong, a leader of the 2014 democracy protests, was released early from prison this morning.
British prime ministerial candidates went head-to-head. In the first televised debate of the heated race to replace Theresa May, five Tories took aim at front-runner Boris Johnson, the former London mayor and foreign foreign secretary, who was absent from the event.
Xi Jinping partied with Vladimir Putin. The Chinese president enjoyed a geopolitically significant 66th birthday celebration alongside Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who gifted him a box of ice cream. Their bromance has America worried.
Matters of debate
This man wants to abolish time. But can it be done?
There’s a pressing need for dedicated LGBTQ media. Stories go untold when there’s a lack of trans and queer reporters and editors.
Crystals are the new blood diamonds. Their contribution to your “healing” is harming the earth.
Surprising discoveries
Billionaires aren’t paying up for Notre Dame. Smaller donors, often Americans, have delivered most of the funding to rebuild the torched Paris cathedral thus far.
Japan cracks down on fruit smugglers. Tokyo want to prevent seeds and saplings of domestically-bred “high-end fruit” like the Shine Muscat grape from being grown abroad without permission.
Bronze-age bagels were tiny. Archaeologists exploring a 3,000 year-old site found tiny charred bread disks that might have been used for food or rituals.
Our best wishes for an inspiring day at the festival. Please send us any news, tips, bingo cards, and yacht wax. Haiku by Daianna from Thoughtful Works. If you have colleagues or friends who would enjoy these emails, be an influencer and forward this along.