McCann Melbourne’s CCO Pat Baron on data and MIFF’s Lion-winning ‘The Emotional Trailer’

Pat Baron (right), newly appointed chief creative officer at McCann Melbourne shares his thoughts on data, directly from Cannes Lions, exclusively with CB.

There’s energy to data, ninety five percent of the world’s data has been created in the last three years alone. I now have more access to information than any generation before me.

Data means different things to different people and we’re still learning how to best maximize all this information, how to communicate it, analyze it, when to use it and when not to. There’s an unquenchable thirst to discover its potential and unlock its secrets. The Melbourne International Film Festival’s The Emotional Trailer for example was a unique visceral experience driven by data. This data was collected by human conscious reactions and sub conscious ones then condensed into a campaign. Andy Jones Creative Director at McCann Melbourne says, “we got a collection of critics and film buffs to watch MIFF films prior to their release and collated their emotional reactions through an app and biometric sensors. This data gave us the script that we then fed through sensors using the human face as a display so that the audience could experience films live at the theatre. We then filmed these, to make Emotional Trailers for the actual films, so that people could see how they felt before they knew what they were about.”

Most companies still use data to inform rather than experience, to smell, feel, touch and discover. We’re starting to better understand that data-emotionally driven experiences can attract the kind of reactions on social media that keeps audiences coming back for more. It hits an emotional pulse.

Says Jones: “We wanted to give people an insight into what the films were like, how they’d make you feel, without giving too much away. The way we thought to do so was through the one thing we all have in common: emotions. Films at MIFF make you feel things that the multiplex doesn’t. They can make you think, cry, laugh, feel disgust you and so on. You don’t just see a film at MIFF, you feel it.”

The universe of data can answer many questions and help us understand ourselves as our lives are now documented in a way that means we have few secrets. It can also help us understand something we never had any interest in or develop a new understanding, as was the case for the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Says Jones: “People that go to MIFF generally don’t know a heck of a lot about the films that they could see. And there’s a lot to choose from, in foreign languages, not many actors and directors are well known, so it can be a barrier to going when you don’t know what the film is going to be like.”

We’re incredibly excited and humbled that this week in Cannes McCann Melbourne has received Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions for Creative Effectiveness and Creative Data as these categories light the way.

(Pictured L-R: Ben Lilley chairman and CEO McCann Workgroup Australia with Pat Baron chief creative officer McCann Melbourne)