mannes in cannes – Page 2

June 23, 2013June 24, 2013

Mannes in Cannes: Hope & The Electric Recorder

Words by Monsieur Chris Gotz

I am the Guinness Surfer. I am waiting. Tic toc. Although there are no white horses charging through the waves above me, and I am not a good looking salty blonde surfer dude, and I am staying in a hotel near the sea, not actually in the sea, but I am still waiting. The Film, Integrated and Branded Entertainment Shortlist comes out in an hour. In Cannes this is the last chance saloon, but it is also the big game, the show, the fat lady finally getting her aria.

Yesterday began with the Young Director’s Showcase, a selection of the world’s best young directors walking down the ramp and flashing a bit of side boob for the cameras (I am aware that’s a sexist analogy please feel free to substitute side boob for the male equivalent of side boob, although that’s probably plumber’s crack, so you can see why I went with side boob). It began with Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous Godless man, reading a pompous tract about God knows what (although in this case God does not exist, of course) – apparently it was all about memes, who knew? Mr Dawkins was then replaced by a bit of 80’s and 90’s style geometric animation which looked like it had been borrowed from Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video from 20 years ago. To this was added 3D mapping, the technology so loved by car launches and events companies desperate to hide their lack of an idea with spectacular lighting effects. This ended with Richard Dawkins entering stage left and playing an electric recorder for a few minutes. It was over fairly quickly, thank God (or not in this case, depending on whether you believe in him).What followed was a lovely collection of incredible work from directors around the world. The selection is always a bit wtf and challenging to watch, but it was one of the highlights of Cannes this year.

The stand out piece for me was the Ben Liam Jones directed film for Childline, a masterpiece of gritty reality and sadness. Check out Gevorg Karensky’s live action version of Grand Theft Auto for go-pro gone bonkers. And Nabil’s new music video for Anthony and the Johnsons “Cut the world” is a masterpiece, although I wouldn’t show it to your wife if you’re going through a bad patch. Justin Anderson’s voyeuristic, slightly creepy but very sexy film for Agent Provocateur is also worth a look. There was the life story of a Leica camera, evoked with exquisite grace and power by Vellas. Comedy showed up strongly in Max Joseph’s great film for the Rainforest Alliance and also in Peter Atencio’s Tarentino homage “Pulled over”. You can see all the work on the New Director’s Showcase Youtube Channel.

David Karp, creator of Tumblr (although no longer owner of Tumblr having sold to Yahoo, who need all the help they can get from David Karp) was up on stage.Tumblr really does seem to represent an opportunity for brands to tell “native” stories in an authentic and free environment without restriction. David Karp mentioned the amazing opportunities brands have to work with tumblr a little too much, coming across a bit like an enthusiastic but very sincere encyclopaedia salesman.

Then on Friday morning we got to see the standout seminar of the whole week. Legendary ad heroes Lee Clow and George Lois chatting on stage for an hour. Their work speaks for itself, although they have no problem doing that either. It was flat out fascinating as they connected their work from the past 3 decades to what is going on in the industry now. Clow said sagely that he believed the industry was in a “great shaking out”, and no one really knows where it will end. He did say that until art directors and creative people have truly wrested partial curatorship of the web from the tech guys, and when they really start to collaborate their will be fireworks. George Lois said motherfu$&er a lot and told stories of courage and style and bloody minded stubbornness. He ended with the words, “Fight for your work. And if they don’t like it f$ck em.” Yes, quite. George once threatened to jump out of the window of Manhattan Skyscraper when a client refused to buy his layouts. Thankfully we were on the ground floor of the Palais.

The final Shortlists just hit the wires. Ogilvy Cape Town has 2, which gives us a final, slim chance at glory. South Africa has a smattering of TV Shortlists too. So, as we all descend into the Palais to watch the Film Shortlist, we carry with us, along with our free Cornettos and limited edition Cokes, a last smidgen of hope that somewhere a jury is sticking up their hands and handing us a Lion. Tic toc.

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June 21, 2013June 21, 2013

Mannes in Cannes: F-bombs and Redemption

Words by Monsieur Chris Gotz

It has not been a good week on earth for South Africa. Our cricketers played with all the resolve of wet biltong. Our Baby Boks, despite having a fullback who rivals the roadrunner for energy and pace, crashed out of the World Cup. Our football team, well they just played like our football team. Thanks heavens for our Ad people, who last night redeemed a miserable week for South Africa on the global stage by winning 19 Lions in Press, Design and Radio. The irrepressible Net#work BBDO traced a now familiar path onto stage to collect yet another 2 Gold’s for Mercedes Benz. And then Silvers and Bronzes, lots and lots of them. The downside was yet another loud starter pistol blank in Cyber, which had me sliding forlornly down my seat and left me feeling like Wayne Ferreira at Wimbledon. Or South Africa at a One Day cricket tournament. Or Bafana Bafana at … you get my drift.

I was lucky enough to see John Maeda speak on Creative Leadership yesterday. John is one of those irritating and brilliant polymaths who excel at just about everything. He was recently voted one of the 75 most Influential people of the 21st Century. Creative Leadership, meaning both how to lead creatively and how creative people should lead, is one of the big issues in our industry. More often than not our creative people are appointed on the basis of work they have done, the Lions they have racked up, the Loeries in their cupboard, not leadership ability. Hence the “Mussolini meets Courtney Love they sleep together and have children” style of creative leaders some of us become. He gave me my favourite quote of the festival so far “The grass is always greener on the other side because from far away you can’t see the weeds.” I strongly recommend you get hold of his book “Redesigning leadership“. I found it incredible that a man who is at heart a graphic designer can have the most profound thoughts about redefining leadership. Respect, as they say on the twitter.

I spent much if yesterday afternoon looking at work. The basement hall of the Palais is filled with thousands of pieces of work on display boards, all the shortlisted work in every category. What astonished me was a lot of the work that didn’t win. This was partly because I have residual feelings about the quality of my own work that didn’t win. Nevertheless inspiration, and not winning, remains the true purpose and meaning of Cannes now. Although the organizers will have you think differently.

Last night’s ceremony was a mix of the sublime and the utterly ridiculous.

First up were the endlessly sublime Design Lions. Design is varied and pure and wonderful and just so bloody easy to love. The “Tree Concert” from BBDO Germany for Friends of the Earth will make you happy. The Nike “House of Innovation” window display at Selfridges from Staat Creative in the Netherlands is a beautiful example of what well-crafted digital display can do for retail. The design Lions had integrity and beauty and wonderfully pure craft simply oozing out of every fold and fissure.

The work for 9 Suns Winery made me say the F-bomb to myself slowly.the Grand Prix was an annual report “Self Scan Report” from the wonderful people at ServicePlan Munich. Who would have thought an annual report for a large supermarket chain could win a Grand Prix at Cannes. Not me, I’d try and chuck that brief at some low level junior design minion every time. Yet the Self Scan report is quite brilliant and hugely simple.

Then came the Press Lions. Sandwiched between Cyber and Design, Print is always on a hiding to nothing. Print is fighting for relevance. Print is fighting for its life to be honest. Print is the dinosaur that doesn’t know the goddamn asteroid is about to hit the earth and block out the sun. It seems like the Press Jury may have just decided to speed up the demise of the medium. They followed in a long tradition of utterly crap Grand Prix decisions with their choice of the iPad mini ad for Apple. The Chairman of the Press Jury Marcello Serpa said that the ad was “deceptively simple”. No, Mr Serpa, it was just deceptively shit. Good God. Amongst the Golds were some ads for The Times of India with a pun that wouldn’t get past my junior account man. There was some really great work too, work that was much more deserving of the Grand Prix. The Bayer campaign from AlmapBBDO was lovely and funny and deserved Gold. The campaign for Beijing Sport Radio was cool too. It’s worth looking at the work that that they skipped over in the Silvers and Bronzes (a lot if it admittedly South African), lots of potential Golds there too, perhaps even a likely Grand Prix, but what the heck do I know.

Radio was next. We are “traditionally strong” in radio. It is our security blanket. It disguises our inadequacies in digital and mobile and direct and promo and integrated and cyber. And yes, thankfully, we won Lions in radio. Some superb stuff once again for Mercedes by Net#work BBDO had SA picking up a couple of Golds, the only ones so far for South Africa. There were a few other Golds really worth listening to. First up the AutoTune spot for Dove out of Ogilvy London, the Press Jury should listen to that if they are interested in what deceptively simple really means. The New Zealanders from Draft FCB in Auckland pulled a genius fast one on a local radio station for Prime Television in a radio stunt called Call Girl. And, cue drum roll, brass section, high stepping can can girls, the Radio Grand Prix went to … Dumb Ways to Die. That’s 3 Grand Prix lions and counting for McCann Melbourne, I wouldn’t like to be the finance person that tries to go through their per diems.

Cyber was the last category if the evening. Gone were the websites and games and screen based tricks of the past. Cyber now is all about beautiful crafted and layered film experiences, massively immersive, hugely interactive, multi platformed, add appropriate buzzword here. We need to start looking at digital the same way we see TV : big budget productions with long timelines and massive amounts of effort and craft. If we don’t then Mr Warsop’s Champagne will sit on that creaky leather for a very long time. I felt a bit like the frisky guy in the 10 000 Meters at the Olympics who thinks he really has a good chance and then gets lapped by 12 Kenyans early on in the race. Amphibiox for Geox Shoes from SMFB Oslo was a great example of big budget film values being applied to digital. The Martin Agency produced Clouds over Cuba and showed everyone the future of the documentary – take a good look at this piece, it is truly remarkable and had us chatting about it for ages. For truly extraordinary visual acrobatics look at Golden Chains for ALB from CLM BBDO Boulogne-Billancourt.

The Cyber Grand Prix went to 2 pieces. The Oreo Daily Twist by Draftfcb New York showed us that the true home of tactical advertising is no longer newspapers but the web. The other Grand Prix went to The Beauty Inside from Pereira & O’Dell, San Francisco, for Intel and Toshiba.

A bit of a lull now until the film Shortlist comes out on Friday. It’s always my favourite day at Cannes, hiding away deep in the screening rooms of the Palais devouring the entire reel of film contenders. Rumours are already flying that “DWTD” has to get it. I would rather see Southern Comfort “Whatever’s Comfortable.” win it. So my money is on the big fat guy in a speedo walking down the beach in leather ankle boots. The team that got a client to buy that spot deserve all the Grand Prix that Cannes can possibly throw at them.

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June 19, 2013

Mannes in Cannes. Inspiration day.

Words by Monsieur Chris Gotz

While eating duck breast with strawberries on a bed of bulgur wheat laced with raspberry jus I decided yesterday that Cannes is not kak. Yesterday was a particularly unkak day. Last night at the Outdoor, Mobile, Innovation and Media ceremony we won things, our country won things and, yes, Dumb Ways to Die won things, but you can’t have it all.

South Africa kicked some decent butt in Outdoor when a happy pride of Silver and Bronze Lions lolloped over the horizon ( it is debatable whether Lions lollop but I am going to go with it ). The totally lekker Doom “Wall of Shoes” by TBWA / Hunt / Lascaris Joburg grabbed a Silver, which is good, because a laak it. Also on the scoreboard was Ogilvy Cape Town with 2 Silvers for Volkswagen. One for the Volkswagen Genuine Parts “Puzzles” Campaign and another for the really smart (are you allowed to say that if it’s your own work?) “Don’t text and drive” work.

Also in the frame were Draft FCB Cape Town for their bleddy brilliant Engen “Fire blanket”.

Finally Y&R continue their happy week with some more metal for Landrover.

The Outdoor Grand Prix was one of my favourite pieces this year. The IBM “smart ideas for smarter cities” work by Ogilvy Paris is simple, smart and so beautifully on strat (yes, that is important to creative people) for IBM. I love the fact that it’s a fairly low-fi piece for a hi tech brand. I am also proud to say that the ECD of Ogilvy Paris is SA born Mr Christopher Garbutt.

Mobile is always interesting. South Africa should be winning in mobile. Our mobile growth and penetration is huge, it’s one of the best ways to reach people we probably couldn’t talk to any other way, and yet, nothing, fokol. Not a single South African mobile winner. Instead of being “traditionally strong” in radio, we should be traditionally strong in mobile. It is arrogant and ignorant in the extreme that our mobile creativity is non-existent, we aren’t even trying. Come on everyone, you love your bloody iPhones so much, let’s do some things ( I realize that is one of the most pathetic and nonsensical motivational speeches of all time, apologies).

Some of the best work of the Festival was on show in the mobile category last night. Ogilvy Paris had a corker where they gave away free WiFi in exchange for online Scrabble points. The Score Cleaner Notes app will write sheet music for you when you hum into your phone. And please, please have a look at the Reborn App piece by Antwerp based Duval Guillaume Modem for Organ Donation. Pure genius. The clear and growing intersection of dev, creativity and tech innovation in mobile work is becoming more and more pronounced. I am sad to say we are way, way behind in SA.

The best idea of the Festival so far was from DDB Dm9 for Smart Textbooks. They recycled old sim cards and downloaded school textbooks onto them (the textbooks were proving too expensive to print). The sim cards were then handed out at schools and kids popped them into their phones. Voila. That’s what I love so much about Cannes, the ideas that prove that our industry truly can make a huge difference if we do what we do well. Technology is magnifying the power of creative thinking more than ever before Viva la revolución.

The innovation Lions were interesting, lot’s of software and apps and deep tech ideas. There was talk that it felt like the industry was stepping outside of its territory, which I think is the point really isn’t it? The Grand Prix went to Cinder from The Barbarian Group, who created a software development platform for creative coding. Another winner was the GetIn bank credit card from MasterCard, which reveals the balance of your card as a digital readout on the card itself. Not sure if that would be good idea in South Africa.

My absolute favourite talk so far has been “How not to be a douchebag in advertising” by the perfectly wonderful people from Mother New York. I can think of a few people back home who could have done with this information. The talk was really all about finding your happy place in advertising. They proceeded to skewer the big network structures and condemn us all to advertising purgatory. They don’t have account management at Mother. Now, while it has been tempting to occasionally exterminate errant account management people, I have never thought of leaving them out of the structure altogether. What would we charge our clients for if we didn’t have a brigade of client service people on their fee ? How would we make money? We would be forced to rely solely on our creative product for our income. Gasp, horror.

Then Huffington Post power woman and ultimate leaner-inner Arianna Huffington took the stage to talk about how to stay healthy and wise in the digital age. It was fascinating and inspiring and just made supreme sense. She talked about the value of sleep, something that felt very relevant to me having been kept awake last night by an air con unit that sounded like it was powering the Death Star. She recommended nap rooms and meditation rooms in agencies (these are common now in the US, but not in agencies). And, aptly, she made the observation that creative people are at their best when they are allowed to rejuvenate regularly. This is not a startling observation, but she did point out that agencies somehow derive a weird sense of bravado about pushing mega hours. I tweeted about how impressed I was with her talk. She replied within minutes, thanking me. That is seriously impressive. I do realize that her twitter handle may very well be managed by a call centre in Bangladesh, but I am still impressed.

The opening Gala followed the ceremony last night. This is kind of like a United Nations of men with beards and spectacles and women in strappy dresses talking in 150 languages about how shit the decisions of the various juries have been throughout the week. I did hear some interesting stuff though. Client attendance is through the roof this year, 40% of Cannes delegates are marketers this year. That is astounding.

In other news Ogilvy seem to be hurtling towards network of the year. Over 80 Lions and counting now, more than in the entire week last year. Although I must say that all this ranking and tabulating and counting and comparing the various distances and velocities of our own urine might be a little (just a little) over the top. Just saying. We are here to see the work. We are here to find out how to push our industry forward. We are here to seek out new ways to sell our clients’ stuff and make money for their employees and shareholders. Most of all we are here to discover how to change and adapt to and cope with the single biggest advance in the human condition since the bloody industrial revolution. So reducing it all to a conversation about who has the biggest willy is a bit sad and, dare I say, a bit male. Perhaps Arianna Huffington was right – the first women’s revolution was asserting their right to vote. The second has been establishing their place at the top of the men’s world – in business, in politics, in the arts and communication. The third is still to come, in which women express their dissatisfaction with this world of men and change it completely to make it one of their own design.

If this is the case then my wonderful, lovely wife is way ahead, certainly in my house anyway.

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June 17, 2013June 17, 2013

A Mannes in Cannes, just about.

Words by Monsieur Chris Gotz

I am not yet A Mannes in Cannes. At the moment I am a man in an airplane somewhere over France. Until a few days ago the French Air traffic controllers were all stamping their feet and throwing stale baguettes about the place in a fit of pique over new EU regulations to reduce the amount of air traffic control hubs over Europe. This would significantly improve the efficiency and safety of air traffic over the continent, however it would also significantly reduce the amount of French air traffic controllers, hence the flinging of stale baguettes and a wildcat strike. My BA flight seems to be flying in a dead straight line towards Cannes, so clearly tempers have cooled for the moment.

There have been so many Cannes Predictions in the past week it was hard to keep it up. They were flying around like stale baguettes in a French air traffic controllers strike. Nevertheless, I do feel I should weigh in with some thoughts on what will win. That way, presuming my predictions are spot on, you can all save yourselves the trouble of actually following the Festival online.

Let’s juggle the narrative a bit and start at the end then. The week will end with a Grand Prix for Film going to the fabulous “Dumb ways to die” public safety film by McCann’s Sydney. By then everyone will be singing along with this catchy number and it will be lovely and remind everyone of the whistling along to Honda Grrrr all those years ago. The Film jury will feel awfully pleased with themselves because “Dumb ways to die” is more of a music video, “content” thingy than an actual commercial. This will give the jury and the jury chairperson, John Hegarty, the chance to use the word “content” frequently in their interviews, which, as everyone knows, is absolutely essential if you are going to have any credibility at all these days. I think by the end of the week “Dumb ways to die” will have won so many times it may cause jealous creatives to actually seek out a few dumb ways to die themselves. Expect a drunk Pole to march into the Med with a hair dryer – which wouldn’t actually kill him because it wouldn’t be plugged in, but he is, after all, a drunk Polish man.

Coming close to a Film Grand Prix, and my personal fave (not that my opinion matters anywhere beyond my cramped economy class seat ) will be the brilliant Southern Comfort film from Wieden’s – “Whatever’s Comfortable” – an exercise in strangeness and quirk that makes me happy every time I watch it.

I think Felix Baumgartner and Red Bull’s Space Jump thingy will win frequently this week. Apparently 8 million people watched it live online, which is slightly less than your average to good cat video can pick up in a few days. Admittedly cat videos are not live, but they could be, although to get the cats to cooperate would be difficult. I am not a big fan of the Red Bull thing. I watched it and I was utterly bored throughout. But, once again, it allows people to talk sagely about “content” and “branded entertainment” and for these reasons alone it will dominate the week. Grand Prix tomorrow or Tuesday for something I would guess.

Probably my favourite piece of work going into this week is Dove “Sketches”. It is an activation, a film, a direct marketing piece and probably also qualifies in a hundred other categories. It is a beautiful piece of truth, brilliantly executed and bang on strategy for Dove. It is also the most watched piece of commercial “content” in ad history online. I expect it to win big. It may just put Ogilvy Brazil in pole position for Agency of the Year. Hope it does.

In Outdoor I really love the IBM “Smarter city” work by Ogilvy Paris, it will feature prominently I think. Another piece of genius IBM work is the “World’s Smallest Film” by Ogilvy New York. Anyone who takes the trouble and time to isolate and animate single atoms, then magnify them a hundred million times and make a little film about a boy and his ball, well, I suspect even the French air traffic controllers would stop throwing stale baguettes and break into a smattering if applause.

On the other hand I may just be terribly wrong about all of this. In which case I will report faithfully all week about the real results and let you know what everyone thinks. I’ll also try and remember the good bits from the Seminars and give you the sparkly bits from those. Expect many mentions of the word “content” and “data” and “baguette”. Expect also a progressive and all encompassing gloom as our own work slips in and out of contention. Last year I was able to whoop and fist bump and feign modesty and then dance badly at the parties like a 40 year old nerdy white guys. This year, well, we shall have to see, but I’ll make sure I have a few stale baguettes to fling about should the likely eventuality of losing come to pass. It’s the hope, after all, that kills you.

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June 26, 2012

Mannes in Cannes // Part 6 // I know what you did last night.

Well, this is my final Mannes in Cannes. Reason being, I am not even in Cannes anymore. So this is more “Man in Dubai International Airport on Dodgy Wifi Eating BLT” which has a lovely ring to it you must admit.

To be honest the last few days have been of a mind copulation. Beginning with a lovely, air-conditioned viewing of the outstanding TV Shortlist on Friday. And what a great Shortlist it was, viewed with the bare minimum of low whistles (the Cannes version of the boo, don’t ask me why). This was accompanied by the news that Ogilvy Cape Town had one last Shortlist, in Branded Content and Entertainment, for our Carling Black Label “Be the coach” work. So we were to be in the game for the final ceremony at Cannes, the grand finale of the week.

Also on Friday was the long awaited on-stage chit-chat between Dan Wieden and John Hegarty. Together, as founders of fiercely independent agencies Wieden and Kennedy and BBH, they have given the world some of the most recognizable and best loved work of the past 2 decades, for brands such as Levi’s, Nike, Honda and, more recently, The Guardian. This was barbed, slick, funny and wise banter the likes of which you don’t see often. It was easy to see why these guys have set the pace for advertising excellence for a while now.

Friday night was South African party night. Very cool to see the flag flying over the Croisette. The general feeling was that we had done jolly well ( at that stage 25 Lions for the week) but our paltry 4 film Shortlists was like totally not cool hey bru, we need to make like Avis and try harder. It was good to get together with some local seuntjies after a hectic week of talking in broken English to full bearded Swedish web designers and trying to evade aggressive New York production people.

Saturday, for me, began on the beach, with a vroeg in die more swim in the Med.

As I towelled myself off, my phone buzzed excitedly next to me. It was 10.35. As a shortlisted agency at Cannes you generally spend the day of the ceremony in a state of angsty anticipation in case you get “the call” from the festival organizers, who will tell you that you have won gold. Generally this does not happen and the prickly anticipation fades rapidly after 10.30, to be replaced by a bleak disappointment, which is in turn replaced later in the day by a fresh, although slightly muted, optimism that you may have won silver or bronze.

The message, from my wonderful and tremendously on the ball awards manager back home in SA, said simply “We got gold””.

Anyone who was on the Ville de Cannes beach that day would have observed a man in black swimming trunks get up off his lounger and air punch repeatedly. This was directly followed by a curious hopping dance on the water’s edge. The rest of the day was spent in a trance-like state of serendipity, punctuated by vigorous bromantic hugging of fellow Ogilvy SA people.

So for the very first time I did not have to queue with thousands of sweaty delegates in the sun for 2 hours before the Film ceremony. Tommy Le Roux and I were shown to our seats at the front of the auditorium. Directly in front of us was Ted Royer, Chief Creative Officer of Droga 5, who was receiving txts throughout the ceremony from the man himself, Dave Droga. We know this because we read them over his shoulder. Towards the end of the evening our big moment arrived and we shuffled happily across the stage to collect our Gold Lion from the Jury Chair. It all happened very fast, a bit like a car accident, only a good one, if that makes any sense.

Film Grand Prix went to goody-goody fast food outlet Chipotle “Back to the start”, which I liked a lot. That piece also got the Branded content and entertainment Grand Prix for the work done around it in the Cultivate program. The Gold’s were all good on the night. There are too many to list, and this blog post is very late, mostly due to the aliens’ interfering with our server capacity (at least that’s what the IT guy says). But please have a look at them (Click here), they are a huge part of what was, for me anyway, the best work I have seen at Cannes for years. It’s been lovely jabbering away like this all week. It would be great to do it again this year. It would be even better to do it while my agency clocks up another 7 Lions, although that would be overly optimistic.

I will see you all back in SA after my 26 hour flight odyssey. I dearly hope I do not have to sit next to a full-bearded Swedish web designer or a hustling New York animatic production agent.

I have had enough of that for one year. And I really don’t want to have to share my Xtra large bag of duty free Maltesers with anyone.

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