Cannes Lions, the International Festival of Creativity held at the picturesque town of Cannes (pronounced as can as in tin can) on the French Riviera started on a stimulating note. 12,000 delegates from more than 90 countries, around 37000 entries, 500 speakers and seven days of inspired learning through the series of Seminars, Forums, Workshops, Master Classes, Tech Talks, the exciting award ceremonies, and many more such events.
Attending the sessions I found creativity and storytelling to be the central theme at the festival this year. Speaker after speaker shared their views on creativity and the creative process. Some bold thoughts, some crazy ideas, some inspired beliefs, but all speaking about the power of creativity and its role in change – whether it’s change in consumer behaviour, an industry or even the world.
The legendary Pandey brothers –Piyush and Prasoon spoke about how they changed the Indian advertising industry – from a superficial industry with no voice of its own and still carrying a chip of the old British Raj to a distinct Indian style of advertising. Earlier even a carpenter in an ad looked like a model, said Prasoon. We decided to bring in real Indian faces that people could relate to and tell stories about India. It is no wonder then that when their ad campaigns for companies like Pidilite, Happydent, Times of India and Google were shown to the international audience at the festival, they received a thunderous applause.
A divergent view on creativity was shared by Michael Lebowitz, CEO and founder of the Big Spaceship. His belief on developing creativity was by “killing the creative department.” Departments create silos, silos alienate people, so break silos, set free all structures and think different he said.
At the Adobe session, Yves Behar, Founder and CEO fuseproject, Scot Belsky from Behance and PJ Pereira, co founder of Pereira & O’Dell discussed the changing role of the new creatives. Today creative professionals must reinvent themselves and learn to work in the ever changing landscape of media, technology and disciplines to create ideas wherever consumers can experience them. Today an art director cannot just do art but should widen his horizons. Creative people today need to “think like a marketer, behave like an entrepreneur and move like a tech start up.” This is something all creatives must mull on.
Creativity of another kind was shown at the talk by Ash Bendelow, MD, Brave. He shared some eye opening insights on how the big 4 casino groups at Vegas have converted Vegas from just a gambling destination to a resort. Their use of technology, innovation and data has taught them how to know each customer that walks in there and understand his or her spending cycle and loss tolerance. They have used real time data analytics to ensure that the customer stays happy and does not leave when he is losing. “Vegas know you better than you know you.”A big learning for all brands definitely.
“Big data and analytics are not substitutes for creativity” announced the legendary Chuck Porter. Just use every new technology to do brilliant work, have fun and tell stories. Storytelling is still the best app available.
On a different note, the Forum devoted a whole day to discuss the topic of creative talent. Where do we find creative talent? How do we retain them? How do we challenge them? What are the career choices available to creative talent? Several useful insights were shared by some of the world’s top recruiters. A common message conveyed was that the onus of providing challenging work to the team lay squarely with the agency.
The epitome of creativity and innovation was shared was the dream of creating a solar powered plane. Dr. Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg of Solar Impulse spoke of creating their aircraft and their mission of flying it around the world. An interesting thing mentioned was that they announced the aircraft even before having an idea of the technology and resources available. “Once we burnt our bridges, we knew there was no looking back.” Now isn’t that a lesson in madness and belief?
The festival appears to be another brilliantly crafted one. I for one am totally awed by the learning and the glamour and looking
Authored By: Vandana Kakar, she is representing MediAvataar @ Cannes.