Simon Hayes + Giles Clayton’s Cannes Diary: Pt 4
Simon Hayes and Giles Clayton, a young creative team from J. Walter Thompson Sydney, have competed in the Print category of the Cannes Young Lions competition. The pair write exclusively for CB.
The day after the Finch boat party we must say started a little late. Instead of springing out of bed like the last few mornings it was more of a drop and roll technique.
A solid breaky later and we made it to the festival. First on our agenda was a talk on the light hearted subject of the most influential dogs on social media, hosted by The Dog Agency. This was a smart move considering our fragile states and we needed a few laughs to spike the endorphins. What we learned is if you want to make cash buy yourself a dog that looks slightly retarded and start posting daily photos on Instagram. It was actually mind blowing how fast some of these Insta-Dogs gained traction and now make a serious living for their tenny-bopper owners.
After gulping down a couple of free Pepsi’s we moseyed over to see a talk called: “Keeping Audiences Engaged” The answer? 24/7 NON-STOP HIGH IMPACT WRESTLING!! Yes, the session was hosted by the WWE and featured an inspiring speech from self-proclaimed wrestling superstar and children’s smile creator, John Cena. There were two key take outs from the talk:
1. Don’t attempt to wear a blazer if your biceps are the size of small trucks and..
2. The WWE isn’t actually about wrestling at all, it’s about “giving people smiles” (and making a shit tonne of money flogging a pantomime as a sport to mentally challenged Trump supporters – but they didn’t mention that)
We left John Cena confused about what this festival is really all about. So we made our way downstairs to the basement where they display all of this year’s shortlisted work. It’s a pretty inspiring place. Besides the fluorescent lights making it fell a little like a 7/11, seeing all the world’s best work defiantly pumps you up to get back here next year with some lion winning work of our own. A few standouts for us would have to be Harvey Nichols – Love Freebies, Andes – The Fairest Night Of All, DB Export – Brewtroleum and a stroller company that made an adult sized stroller so you can test it out before buying – brilliant.
The highlight of day four was seeing Spike Jones and Shane Smith (Founder of Vice) talking about how they’re breaking all the rules for how to cover news and journalism, and it’s working. For some reason we never had a clue that Spike was the Co President of Vice but totally makes sense. The pair couldn’t be cooler in their own ways. It’s strange when two guys at the top of their game don’t feel the need to spiel off wanky ‘inspirational’ chat. All they said was: “we want to make cool shit”.
In amongst the sea of buzzwords and bullshit that can get overwhelming in Cannes, this was so refreshing to hear.