A change I have noticed this year is that the seminars have become interactive. The speakers have started taking questions from the audience, asking for a show of hands and even asking the audience to do a few exercises. Sheryl Sandberg, the elegant COO at Facebook took advantage of this and used audience participation to drive home certain key points.
“How many men have ever asked women, how do you do so much work?” She asked the audience representing more than 90 countries. As expected there were hardly any hands going up proving her point about the gender bias against women. What does this have to do with creativity? She urged the advertising community to change the cultural stereotypes against women by crafting women friendly messages. No more ads of working women leaving crying children at home she said. It’s your responsibility to change the world she announced. An interesting insight she mentioned was that merely three per cent of creative directors in the world are women. Time for the industry to wake up.
This of course was a diversion. The topic she came to discuss was the personalisation of media. The need of the hour is to give a personal touch to mass produced messages. Your creativity lies in providing a personal experience to every customer that you engage with, she said. “Marketing has become personal again. My shopkeeper grandfather knew all his customers, then we went mass media and marketing. Experience on Facebook shows people want personal again.”
Further on the theme of storytelling, I attended a workshop on visual storytelling by Tumblr. I understood what Tumblr was and realised I would never be on it so beat a hasty retreat.
“Are there skills to be learned from trained negotiators? A workshop on dealing with antagonism.”
Found this topic fascinating and discovered a workshop that dealt with developing relationships with challenging people at challenging situations. Conducted by Simon Wells, a former cop with the Metropolitan Police and a Hostage and Crisis negotiator with the UN, the workshop shared insights on message construction, storytelling, first impressions, conversations, listening…all required for conducting an effective negotiation. Don’t label a person he advised. First understand his values, beliefs and world view. His question, “How do you see yourself and how do you think others see you?” got everyone thinking. One hour got over too soon and we all felt that we had just about brushed the surface of this intriguing area.
A much awaited session was the Time Warner seminar on the Power of the Story. The makers of epic shows, The Game of Thrones and the American political comedy Veep spoke about their shows and why they had captured the interests of people across the globe. Their advice to storytellers – tell stories you want to hear yourself.
So as you can realise, the sessions at Cannes are assorted and range from topics like films, advertising, communications, technology, behaviour, sciences, etc. There are around 5 to 6 sessions happening simultaneously across the Palais, the festival venue. Selecting the relevant sessions to attend is really the challenge. As I left the Palais, I hoped I had not missed something worthwhile.
Authored By: Vandana Kakar, representing MediAvataar @ Cannes
