FESTIVAL DAY 2

SCHEDULE: Tuesday, June 20th

• 10:00 Kevin Hart

• 10:45 Estée Lauder

• 13:00 Havas Lunch

• 15:45 Risk-taking

• 16:45 Will.I.am

Kevin Hart

The Entertainment Person of the Year Seminar

The first talk of the day was Kevin Hart. This was my all-time must-see talk for the entire festival so we got there 40 minutes early and there was a line that wrapped around the Palais. We were lucky enough to be close enough to the front of the line that we got the front row! It was really cool and impactful for me to be able to see someone who I grew up watching in person and have idolized. He heavily highlighted his production company, Hartbeat, which produces films, television, and podcasts which was built on the foundation that humor can unite people. While he made it clear that his business is way more than just his name and humor, he also talked about how he used his personality to his advantage. His name got him in the door business-wise, but the company he built itself is what was able to seal deals. A quote from him that stood out to me was, “Charisma and charm are overlooked.” I agree with him, and I believe that your personality can be linked to your reputation or what people think about you. Sometimes being yourself, being more casual, and using humor can provide better connections. And like Hart emphasized a lot in his talk, people love to laugh.

The Estée Lauder Companies

Presents Evolving Icons: A New Generation of Brand Representation and Beauty

The next talk I went to was with Estée Lauder. On the panel representing Estée Lauder was Jane Lauder, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Marketing and Chief Data Officer at Estée Lauder, and Amanda Gorman, Writer, Activist, and Estée Lauder Global Changemaker. Jane is the granddaughter of Estée Lauder, who was described by her grandmother as “the original influencer.” The company was started by her grandma 8 decades ago by the beliefs of human connection and high-quality products. Estée wanted to make an impact in the world and she served as a powerful female role model. I found it interesting how the company tries to paint itself currently. During the talk they indirectly talked about the importance of reputation and why their beauty company is successful now is because they draw off the original Estée Lauder’s core values from back when she founded the company. It has worked for them to stay true to themselves and now their company is the largest prestige beauty company in the world. I was most interested in listening to how they were able to develop their company from Estée in her Manhattan apartment making skincare products herself to now a huge powerhouse in the beauty industry. In addition to staying true to their coure, founding, values, they also are focused on making current social change. Amanda Gorman is the someone they believed embodied Estée’s core values and would represent the Estée Lauder name in a good light. Something that Gorman talked about that really resonated with me was that beauty is not solely on a physical level, but also on an emotional level. For example, how can beauty products make you feel confident and like your true authentic self? I thought this was interesting considering that the beauty industry could be seen from one side as toxic, for pushing unrealistic beauty standards through makeup, but they are emphasizing the other side which is those products can make you feel more confident in yourself.

Havas Lunch

College Student Luncheon

Next, we went to a college student lunch event by Havas. Going into this event I had no idea what to expect or what it was going to be all about, and to be honest I did not even know what Havas was (but now I do and they’re super cool!!) I went with my three friends from UM, Ashley, Clarke, and Eliza, and when we first got there we were dying of thirst and exhausted from walking around in the Cannes heat, so we were looking for somewhere to sit. We sat down on a couch and unknowingly we took the seats of the panelists that were about to speak! However, they were super nice and let us sit there still as long as we made room for them. Quickly the entire space filled with college students eager to hear the panelists speak and get their wisdom and we were just sitting there on the stage with them. It was a really funny moment that I will never forget.

The Panel consisted of 5 Havas representatives. Each speaker took around 10 minutes to go through their section of the presentation. Each person gave background information about themselve and what theit position is at Havas, showed a project that they did, and then gave their one biggest piece of advice to us. The speaker that resongated with me the most was Andre Gray, the chief creative officer at annex 88. He showed a project he did with JBL in relation to sports, fashion, and the city of Denver. They produced “the first fashion show on the snow” and had snowboarders sporting their JBL products. They did this to show how JBL can be fashionable and an acessory to a certain look, how JBL products can be used for athletics, and made a campaign to target the people of Denver through their popularity with winter sports even though this campaign was during the NBA season.

https://www.jbl.com/stories/peaks.html

I am extremely grateful and fortunate that I went to this event. I got to meet other college students from different schools which was really nice because it made me realize that we were not in it alone. We were all able to bond over the fact we are in very similar positions, in terms of being the same age, it being our first time at Cannes, and being slightly overwhelmed. Additionally, I got the change to talk to Andre after and I got to tell him how interesting I thought his campaign was and I got some advice from him.

General Mills and Scott Galloway

Presents From Missteps to a Billion-Dollars: The Journey of Creative Risk-Taking

This talk was with General Mills and was moderated by NYU Professor Scott Galloway. To being this talk on the topic of risk-taking, they mentioned the Bud Light Controversy where they featured a transgender woman in a campaign that got a lot of backlash considering that many Budlight consumers come from a conservative background. This risk by Budlight was used as a comparison point and opened up the conversation about how can you take a good creative risk. Melissa Wildermuth, the Global Creative Director at General Mills said, “Creativity is inherently a risk.” This stuck out to me and was a theme for a good portion of the talk. Her point was that creativity is defined by solving problems. Both she and Doug Martin, her co-panelist and Disruptive Growth Officer at General Mills described that to be able to take risks as a company you need to create the right environment that is conducive to risk-taking. To them, this can be done by internally relying on teams and co-workers within a company. They emphasized that human relationships are important to maintain through teams and they make sure that working together doesn’t feel too objective driven. I really enjoyed listening to Scott Galloway talk, he was very humorous and was not afraid to say what was on his mind. He definitely pushed the General Mills speakers with their answers. Something interesting that he said was that he is both a conspiracy theorist but also a capitalist.

TwentyFirstCenturyBrand and will.i.am

Presents Unlocking Everybody’s Innate Creative Potential: The New Era of Collaboration

The last talk of the day that I went to was Will.I.Am. I really wanted to see him speak, but I went into it not knowing what was going on besides that he was an artist that I liked. I was pleasantly surprised by this talk and it turned out to be one of my favorite of the week. He charismatically spoke about his app FYI and showed in real time how to use his app by screen sharing his phone that was displayed on the big screen to the entire audience. To showcase his app features he went into the Black Eyed Peas group chat! His app serves as a one-stop shop for creation and collaboration with the additional bonus of being extremely AI equipped. His app acts as a messaging platform for group chats and messaging between individuals, as well as calls and group calls. Additionally, for album making there are ways to make almost a shared folder of album cover art and raw audio clips. Lastly, he showed his AI chatbot at work when he made it rewrite black-eyed peas song lyrics in a matter of seconds to be sung from a different person's perspective.