The 57th Cannes Lions Festival is drawing to a close, today is the last full day of seminars and the hustle and bustle has died down a little, although unlike yesterday there have been some queues to get into today’s seminars. Not surprising with Yoko Ono apparently doing yoga on stage during the early afternoon session. We’re not sure this was planned but if you invite a performance artist to share the stage, what do you expect?
For me one of the most keenly anticipated sessions of today was WPP’s chairman, Martin Sorrell interviewing Unilever’s new CMO, Keith Weed. The hour session spanned many topics, including digital during which Weed compared social media and digital to teenage sex. In that lots of people are talking about it, few are actual doing it and they are not sure they are doing it right. Despite this he announced that Unilever will be doubling its digital spend over the next year. However, it’s not being done for the sake of it but rather because consumers are increasingly online and Wood believes that you need to be there not just with the consumer but before the consumer – brands need to be the leading edge.
The other interesting session I took in this morning was from Organic on its work with Kimberley Clarke on the revitalisation of the Kotex brand. Not well known in the UK and considered fuddy-duddy in the States, Organic demonstrated some truly insightful thinking to relaunch the brand, using a product line extension, and created some thought provoking work that’s well worth a watch.
PNCannes, PNCannesLions, Unilever