The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has been on my bucket list ever since I started in marketing.
I’m here for the first time this week thanks to System1 — who I’ve known since their Brainjuicer days. They invited me to be a Marketoonist-in-Residence for the week, so I’m going to capture some of the themes I notice as I wander the event.
This is the first time that humor is a distinct award category for the Cannes Lions, so if feels like a particularly good time to be here, helping poking a little fun at marketing and advertising.
One of the fascinating parts of the environment here is the deafening level of marketing to other marketers — and the effort that brands take to get noticed and try to get people to their events. The yacht party and beach party one-upmanship is particularly entertaining to watch.
A friend from the Bay Area mentioned to me the irony of traveling all the way to Cannes to try to set up meetings with other people who are also based in the Bay Area.
Mark Ritson is giving a session tomorrow on marketing effectiveness titled “Creativity is not Enough.” Thinking about the focus of this talk in the context of so much marketing spend in Cannes was hard to resist parodying in a cartoon.
I’ll share a recap next week, or you can follow along during the week on my LinkedIn.
And here’s another cartoon I drew a few year ago on Cannes:
