Friday 2 October 2009

Cannes Lions - Warsaw event 01.10.09

Last night I attend the Warsaw leg of the Cannes Lions review. It was hosted by SAR (the Polish Ad Industry body) and Phil Thomas from Cannes Lion International came over from London to talk to the 700 or so the ad industry folk gathered at the Terraces Zloty cinema.


It was nice touch that Phil came over here - that will hopefully encourage some more creative bravery in the market. Given Poland's size it is hugely underrepresented at Cannes and generally has a lower level of creative output than a market of this size warrants.


The message from Thomas was clear - our inductsy is changing as consumers engagement with the media and therefore advertising changes, "our jobs and roles will change completely in the coming years" Thomas said. This, of course, is music to my ears. Hopefully everyone took a little inspiration from the event.


The event was a little swollen on the side - at 4hours in length not everyone stayed the course, its hard to retain anyones attention for that long, let alone the ad folk. Especially when you play out no less than 5 adidas 10 min films back to back - that really did not deserve to be there.


My personal favorite was a series of 3 films by DRAFTFCB Stockholm, SWEDEN. A campaign to encourage Swedes to pay their TV license.




What I loved about this, beyond the brilliantly executed fake flash mob humor of the movie, was the simple but powerful insight: In Sweden instead of demonising those who do not pay their TV license (the UK model), celebrate the fact that many people (like you) activily chose to pay their license. As they say independent TV and radio is not a given thing.

Loads of other great campaigns to see on the Cannes Lions site. Indeed what struck me was that in today's era of tight budget, witness power of many of the shorter length copy ads. As Dave said Drogba - the economic crisis as 'belt' is not necessarily restricting the flow of blood to Creatives brains.

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