FESTIVAL DAY 1

Schedule: Monday, June 19th

• 10:00 Snapchat Yacht

• 11:00 Pinterest Beach

• 12:45 Future Gazers

• 14:00 Droga5 and Levis

• 15:15 Louis Vuitton

• 15:50 TikTok

• 16:45 Disney & ESPN

Snapchat Yacht

To kick off the Cannes Festival, I went to a talk with Snapchat on their yacht. It was pretty much just our class and people from Snapchat on this boat, and they were being interviewed while we listened in. However, it felt interactive because of the small setting and we were able to ask questions. The first speaker talked a little bit about Snapchat’s new feature called “My AI” which is now on every Snapchat user's account and it is an AI bot that you can Snapchat like any other user on your phone. They said, “My AI is just the beginning for us.” The My AI portion of the interview stood out to me because the festival was only a couple of weeks after they released this feature, so it was cool to learn about the thought process of implementing that feature and what’s to come with AI and Snapchat.

It was really interesting being able to be in such an intimate setting with all of the Snapchat executives. Even though they were being interviewed to create their own content to use, they also talked about the college student demographic which made the interview we sat in on very rewarding.

However, I did not last long on the boat due to me being an extremely motion sick person, so I had to leave the boat early after the first speaker.

Pinterest Beach

After leaving the port area, I walked over to Spotify Beach in hopes to see Emma Chamberlain, however, they would not let me in :). So I went next door to Pinterest Beach which did not disappoint. They called their pop-up event the “Manifest-ival” which consisted of free boba, a custom station for tote bags, free piercings, tattoos, and tooth gems. Everything at Pinterest Beach was inspired by what the most searched things on Pinterest were that year. For example, the search “tiny tattoos” was a commonly searched phrase so they were offering free small tattoos at the festival. I thought this was a really interesting way for them to run their event at Cannes. As a user and fan of Pinterest, I appreciated how accessible and inclusive Pinterest Beach was and how they listened to their users’ wants and interests by actually implementing popular searched phrases. As one of the users who looked up “tooth gems” on Pinterest in the past year, I decided to get a tooth gem! It only took about 10 minutes, and I thought it would make my parents the least upset considering the other options were tattoos and piercings. I thought Pinterest was a brand who definitely did Cannes right!

Future Gazers

The Human Cost of Predictive AI, The Cultural Climate of New Luxury, Social Influence.

The second talk that I went to was the Future Gazers talk. I went to see David Fischer specifically because I was really excited to hear him talk about his clothing brand. He explained that Highsnobiety started as a publication that has been around for 18 years and now they have developed their own clothing line. He spoke about their two core pillars of business: new luxury and the cultural pioneer. “New luxury” is a term they coined to describe how luxury is an everchanging space and there is a dilemma in brands staying true to themselves and their core values while understanding that times are changing. Fischer said, “The codes of luxury have changed.” Meaning that things that are traditionally associated with luxury such as quality and craft, are still important but now so are things like creativity, partnerships, and collaborations. The term “cultural pioneer” is used to describe a young affluent consumer that serves as a cool friend, trendsetter, early adopter, and knowledgeable about new brands and products. This person is a key consumer and cares deeply about culture. He emphasized the importance of being a culturally credible brand and the three cornerstones they created for brands to become culturally credible are: world-building, curation, and contribution. A quote from Fischer that really stood out to me was “Attention is the biggest currency” I connected this to the fact that consumer attention spans are so short and it has become increasingly harder to hook and retain attention from viewers, so I found it interesting that Fischer believes that entertainment, culture, and creating an experience and connection with consumers are the ways around that.

Levi’s

The next talk I went to was with Levi’s and it was all about their 501 jeans. It was the 150th year of their 501 jeans and they showcased this pair of jeans by discussing its importance and impact throughout the talk along with physically having an original pair of the 501 jeans displayed. On the panel was a Levi’s historian that was tasked with collecting stories about people's connections to the Levi’s 501 jeans over time. Through this research, the key takeaway that they found was that the 501 jean is truly a timeless product which is was makes Levi’s unique and stand out from the crowd. They showed through their presentation with their visuals that Levi’s has been around forever and that they have been worn on the cover of magazines by people working in the coal mines many years ago. A lot of their presentation was focused on the history and story of Levi’s but currently, they are focusing on doing more partnerships to connect with consumers, especially targeting the younger ones, through collaborations with Rolling Loud and Jordan’s. What I found most interesting about this talk was how Levi’s, and more specifically their 501 jean, is truly timeless, which is in my opinion, key to what makes a brand/ product iconic.

The Brandtech Group and Louis Vuitton

Creativity Inside With Faye McLeod Louis Vuitton

This talk was one of my must-see talks of the week and I was really excited for it. Representing Louis Vuitton was Faye McLeod the Visual Image Director. It was really enjoyable to hear McLeod speak. She spoke extremely humbly and casually about herself and her work even though to me the things she spoke about were extremely cool and crazy to learn more about! During the talk, they went through some of the projects she had done with Louis Vuitton and they showed some of her work on the screen. She thought outside of the box when doing her projects and would transform the Louis Vuitton stores from the inside out, even if it was difficult, and it gave consumers a more immersive Louis Vitton experience, which was super interesting to me. My favorite piece of work I saw by her was her tiger branding for the Year of the Tiger.

TikTok

How Community and Entertainment are Transforming Purchasing Habits Globally

I watched the TikTok talk from the screens in the basement because there were no more open seats by the time I got there. During this talk, Sofia Hernandez, Global Head of Business Marketing at TikTok, talked about the importance of brands listening to their consumers and leaning into their interests and wants. In terms of TikTok, this can be seen through brands adopting trends or interactivity with followers on their TikTok pages. They emphasized that TikTok’s “level of engagement does not exist elsewhere.” An example that was shared that I really liked was from Chipotle. People were interested in what goes into Chipotle rice and how to recreate it, so Chipotle workers responded in real time showing a BTS video of how they make their rice in the kitchen. It wasn’t staged and it got 9.4 million views and around 16,000 comments. I found this use of TikTok for brands interesting because Chipotle got so much free engagement and they did not even have to pay anyone to create a big advertising campaign for them.

The Walt Disney Company

The Formula for Real Change: A Focus on Women’s Sports

For my last talk of the day, I got there super early and just hung out in my seat so I made sure I would get a good seat. This talk was with Rita Ferro, President at Disney Advertising, and Dawn Staley the Head Coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of South Carolina. To start off the talk they asked every woman in the audience to stand up, they then asked all women who have ever played an organized sport to stand up, and lastly, asked every woman who played an organized sport through college to stand up. With each question they asked the group cut down dramatically. When all the women in the audience were asked to stand up, it was a good majority of the audience, however, by the last question there were less than 20 women standing. I think this was a really interesting way to start the talk and it was definitely impactful. From the ESPN side of the talk, they emphasized their role in women’s sports and that they are committed to broadcasting women’s athletics and featured their ESPNW. Women’s sports are becoming increasingly popular and it has been showing through the amount of streams on ESPN, especially Women’s Basketball and their March Madness.

Dawn Staley is the highest-paying female basketball coach and has a contract of 22.4 million dollars with South Carolina. She talked about how she got her contract and the components that went into a huge contract like that such as coaching experience and March Madness and media coverage success of her team. They also spoke about how she is an active advocate for women in sports which was especially shown through her negotiation of her contract. It was really nice to hear her speak and I actually wrote a paper about her for one of my sports administration classes in the past so it was super cool for me to see her in person!