Things were starting to slow down a bit by Friday but there were still a good few talks I wanted to get to see. The first of these was around The strange power of confidence. The panel talked a lot around how people aren’t born with confidence and how it grows over time – and how it can be nurtured. There were some good examples of how brands like Suntrust Bank have focused on confidence within their advertising and how Jim Beam completely changed their approach to re-launch as a confident brand to appeal to a younger audience. I’m sure Mila Kunis helped here!
Actor David Oyelowo then talked about preparation being his key to confidence and they closed the session by picking an audience member to recite some Shakespeare live on stage. Firstly without any guidance and then after a few tips. To be fair, she did very well!
I then went to see Sir Martin Sorrell in Conversation with Ken Auletta. Given the recent furore following Sir Martin around I was intrigued to see how much they’d talk about his departure from WPP and the accusations that he faced. It was a slow start but soon got going as they talked about a range of topics, starting with Ken’s new book on the advertising industry - Frenemies. They then jumped about discussing everything from the future of the big media holding companies, regulation for Facebook, Google et al as well as the balance between privacy and targeting.
They then focused a little bit on Sir Martin’s departure from WPP and the 2 main accusations he faced – firstly his aggressive and potentially abusive management approach and then alleged misuse of corporate funds. Whilst he admitted he could be a difficult person to deal with he talked about his drive for high standards and delivery and suggested the aggressive accusations were a step too far.
He went on the flat out deny the second accusation as completely untrue – after a bit of further probing from Ken. It was really interesting to see the discussion!
I then ended the day with the final session of the festival. Parkland Survivors: The Real and Raw Power of Conviction was a story about hope and about the power that people can have to make change in the world. It featured three survivors from the horrific shooting in Parkland, Florida in February 2018. A shooting in which 17 people lost their lives. I’m not going to lie, it was hard to listen to and even harder to imagine what these young people went through that day.
Despite this, it was an incredibly inspiring and powerful way to end the week. These amazing youngsters have responded to the tragedy in a truly fantastic way – all setting up social enterprises and platforms to help drive real change to tackle the gun problems in America. They’ve already had laws changed and are continuing to fight the battle to make America [and the world] a safer place.
Take a look at Branches of Bravery, Societal Reform Corporation and Change the Ref to see what these guys are doing.
People can make change.
I’ll follow up with a blog to reflect on the week and the key themes that I’ve taken away with me as well as sharing a few more pictures from the week.
Thursday started with a trip to the innovation stage to listen to Black Swan and PepsiCo talk about how they have been using social predictions to drive activity and campaigns within their business. The interesting part for me was trying to unpick the simplicity within the very complicated.
Huge amounts of data [54m pieces of data per day], processed by complex algorithms powered by machine learning and AI. Pretty complex stuff. I think that brilliance lies in harvesting this and turning it into a simple, clear action.
It was good to see the speakers pull in some real world examples rather than try and blow our minds with the theory of all this stuff. PepsiCo have used social prediction to implement a number of business changes – one of those being across their Walkers Sensations product line. By taking the data and making long term predictions [i.e. what will happen in 6 months] they were able to forecast certain ingredients becoming more popular and then produce a new range of flavours to take advantage of this future demand. A new range that is performing really well. Pretty impressive stuff.
They also touched on how Black Swan as a company have developed a charity arm [named White Swan] which is using the same technology to help better diagnose people with currently undiagnosed conditions – helping the medical profession to treat people better and ultimately save lives.
As with other presentations this week, the most powerful opportunities come from the combination of humans and machines. We should be focusing on how these relationships can be strengthened rather than fearing for our jobs!
I then went for some creative inspiration at Google’s What Creativity Can Do session. This was all about how the creative teams at Google have helped to deliver some truly inspiring and socially impactful products, services and work and helped to change people’s lives. Whether that’s partnerships with UNICEF, helping to rebuild countries like Greece after the economic collapse through digital training for people or an app that helps refugees when they first land in a new country. These things all came from the creative teams rather from the strategy or product innovation or leadership teams.
We can’t all do things on the same scale as Google clearly but we should all remember how powerful creativity can be and use it to do more. It’s certainly something I’m going to spend a lot more time thinking about.
I then listened to a great panel on Embracing the Future with some big hitters from the world of media, publishing and brand. It was great to hear the thoughts of WPP, Google, The New York Times and GSK about some of the big challenges and opportunities in the industry.
The last session I went to was about the Nike Breaking2 project. If you’ve not heard about it then you can find out a bit more in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkhtgbBr-cY
I was interested in this more from a people point of view and how the whole project was around pushing the boundaries of what is or isn’t possible. This is a great mind set to have – and whilst I’m clearly not going to attempt to run a marathon in 2 hours – these type of ‘moon shot’ projects so inspire people to do strive to do more. Originally a small idea with limited support at Nike, the team behind it got the support of one passionate senior leader to support it and then they took a big risk and made it happen. He was so bought into the idea that he even got his hand tattooed!
How much could you achieve if we strive for something seemingly beyond reach?
We then ended the day at the Vice+Virtue party at L'église Notre-Dame d'Espérance overlooking La Croisette which was nice! Off to the final few sessions of the week now.
Wunderman, the below the line agency for BT & EE, and our media agency Essence gave us their curated view of the interesting shortlisted work from both a creative and media perspective.
A fantastic example of this is Xfinity Mobile from the US.
They partnered with YouTube to target customers on other networks to show how much their data was costing as they were streaming on 4G turning YouTube's most popular downloads in to 6 second pre-rolls. The innovative targeting, use of data and impactful creative tripled online searches for Xfinity Mobile. I think we can take this approach and flip it round for our existing customers to illustrate how much they get with a Plusnet Mobile package - building on a campaign the customer engagement team are working on already. You can see the film here with more details here - you’ll need to sign up:
https://www.lovethework.com/campaigns/392153
I also met one of my idols, Johnny Marr. Who knew all those years ago in my angst ridden teens Iistening to The Smiths that years later I would be having a selfie with him. Selfies weren't even invented then. It was really interesting to hear about his connections and chance encounters which have taken him in different directions including working on the sound track for the film Inception. He kept returning to his work ethic- it's not easy to write amazing songs apparently (although he did write This Charming Man in 15 mins in between doing his homework!!) and he mentioned one of David Hockney's favourite quotes that he refers back:
“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.”
Wednesday was another day where we just couldn’t see everything we wanted and had to split up a bit. It was also another extremely long day so I’ll try and keep this brief.
We had another tour around The Palais – this time to focus more on the shortlisted media work, with some great insight and curation from our friends at Wunderman. I think Jane will drop her thoughts down on a couple of pieces in a blog to follow shortly.
On face value, the sessions I went to after this looked a bit more light-hearted and entertainment focused but, as you’d hope, there were a number of important themes within them.
I went to listen to Conan O’Brien and Shaquille O’Neill talk about personal brand and entrepreneurship. This was a pretty funny session as both of these guys are naturally very entertaining. They talked about some of the different work they’ve been doing and what was important to them. The big take out here was around authenticity. It’s all about choosing the right partnerships and being true to yourself. They talked about partnerships they’d never do [who knew Shaq hates Spam so much!] and how you’ve got to move with the times and the technology. They also both spoke about creating content for different platforms rather than just playing out a TV ad across every channel. This is something we are trying to do more and more of at Plusnet.
I then dived across The Palais to hear Ari Weiss [CCO of DDB North America] and Rankin Carroll [President Fruity Confections Mars Wrigley – yes, that’s his real job title!] talk about their crazy Super Bowl ad from earlier this year. Chaired by David Schwimmer [who featured in the ads] it was a really interesting look at a unique piece of work.
In a nutshell, Skittles made an advert for one single super-fan and played it to him during the Super Bowl. Exclusive the Rainbow. They got tonnes of coverage and also avoided having to actually buy an ad slot for millions of dollars. They even had his mum and best friend in the advert. You can see some of the teaser ads on the video at the end of this post.
There were two massive learnings for me and, albeit on slightly different budget levels, some great similarities with how we try and work at Plusnet. Firstly, whilst clearly a pretty impressive ‘stunt’ the creative was the result of clear business need and insight. Skittles [and the rest of the category] sold the most in the four week run up to the game. During the game was too late and they needed to engage earlier. They took this insight and ran with it and that turned into this great, disruptive campaign.
The second was that this was about being super smart and super creative. How could they get massive reach and engage the right audience without spending millions and millions on media. How do you make the creative so strong, unique or interesting that it works harder for you. Given our low share of voice this is something that we constantly have to do in order to take the fight to the bigger competitors.
I then continued the celebrity presenter theme and went to hear Edith Bowman quiz Johnny Marr on his life and career. I’ll let Jane cover this off later [and post her selfie with the man himself!]
