#CannesLions Day Two: It’s Google’s World

For Day Two of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity I spent some time away from the Palais and ventured down the Promenade de la Croisette to Google’s Creative Sandbox, a sprawling and awe-inspiring encampment worthy of a Game of Thrones setting. Google really does sit outside of the advertising universe, a Red Giant star with a gravitational pull that is simply inescapable. And so while everyone else hovers in the shadow of the Palais des Festivals, Google sets up camp down the block.

Inside it was a veritable wonderland of custom t-shirts and smoothies (yes, custom smoothies) and quite frankly much more, but I got there just in time for the Lightning Session with Casey Neistat. Casey’s talk was ostensibly about consumers and their Bullshit Detectors. He spoke of how each successive generation was getting better at sniffing out the bogus stuff. That’s what makes his work so compelling, it’s genuine, honest and always rooted in human truths, even when he is working for Nike or J. Crew.

In other news, one of the prevalent memes today came in the form of a quote of sorts from PJ Pereira, Chief Creative Officer at Pereira & O’Dell.

‘Think like a marketer. Behave like an entertainer. Move like a tech startup.‘

It’s a good quote and a strong idea. It’s also quite close to something I was thinking in regards to Unmetric:

‘Think like a scientist, talk like a storyteller.‘

That’s the combination of data and humans that we think about, but it shows that how we are thinking about the future of marketing is not considerably different from one of the more prominent CCOs in the game today. Certainly reassuring that we are headed in the right direction.

More tomorrow, which will be my last day at Cannes.