FESTIVAL DAY 3

SCHEDULE: Wednesday, June 21st

• 11:00 Inside the Jury

• 11:30 The White Lotus

• 14:00 Coca-cola

• 15:00 Secret Speaker: NFL

• 16:15 COD

• 17:00 Alex Cooper

Entertainment for Sports

Inside the jury room

When I first got to the festival Wednesday I was just walking around the festival grounds and the Palais. I was wandering around the basement and found an INside the Jury talk for the Entertainment Category for Sports. It was a panel of judges and they talked about all of the work they viewed and dove into how they chose which work to award. The main trend they saw across the work was inclusion. They said, “the strongest ideas had inclusivity as a method to create superior experiences” The use of diversity and new technologies coming through in sports is what increased engagement. They saw the use of inclusion and diversity in difficult places throughout the work and there were very tough conversations, braveness, that wouldn’t have happened a couple years ago shown. In addition to inclusivity they saw an increase in the trend of more immersive experiences used in an authentic human manner in the works.

Oglivy Presents The White Lotus

Cannes Edition - When Creativity Drives Culture

I was really excited to go to The White Lotus Talk, it is one of my best friends favorite shows and he totally got me hooked! I finished the show just a week before I left the states so it was really cool to hear Mike White, the creator, talk about a show I loved watching. White was approached by HBO over the quarantine era and gave him only 3 weeks to put together a show. He agreed considering that he did not have much to do due to COVID-19. He described the first season of the show to be “rushed with no oversight” however, this was actually a positive for him because he was never able to create something that was just him being 100% creative and that was his first gut instinct ideas. I found it super interesting how The White Lotus completely blew up and that it was by far his most successful work, yet it had the least planning, time spent, and oversight. White was also a contestant on the show Survivor, which is another show I am a big fan of. He explained that parts of White Lotus were derived from his survivor experience, such as really intense, almost scary, music to build suspense when nothing was happening. Overall, I thought it was really cool to hear such an interesting and successful creative speak about what exactly went into his really popular work and it was captivating the fact it was such a rushed project. This was one of my top talks of the week for sure! Mike White is extremely charismatic, funny and just an overall engaging guy.

The Coca-Cola Company

WPP Open X and VMLY&R Present Hear and Be Heard: How to Serenade Gen Z

For the first half of this talk executives at Coke talked about the importance of music in general, in terms of their brand, and in terms if advertising. They also highlighted Coke Studio which is their music platform. Their brand is all about human connection, and to them, nothing does that better than music. Coke's deep history with music, 1971 released a film with big innovation that it wasn't a jingle but it was a brand song that came to be a real song in culture for the first time. Now they focus on immersive music experiences and are working with emerging talent and fostering partnerships. The second half of the talk was a musical performance by Grammy Award winner Jon Batiste!

Secret Speaker

How to NFL Changed My Life

I went into this short 10 minute talk literally knowing nothing about it besides the fact it would be NFL related, but that was the point of the talk! The festival had a few secret speakers over the course of the week that were not announced until the speakers were on stage. The speaker was Efe Obada, a defensive end for the Washington Commanders. He spent his childhood years in the UK, where he was homeless. When he was old enough him and his sister with special needs bounced from home to home through the foster care system but found that a lot of the families that took them in did not accommodate them well at all. At 18 they aged out of foster care and went into a hostel, he got sucked into gang life and was an illegal immigrant so he couldn’t travel, find work, or go to university. He got pulled in the wrong direction and made some bad decisions because he just wanted to be able to provide for his sister. He ended up meeting someone who played American Football and long story short, the NFL got him a visa to practice with the Cowboys which led to him eventually being a full-time professional football player. Obada said he wanted to use this story for good to inspire and motivate others. Even though this talk was really short and I went into it blind it ended up being in my top 3 favorite talks of the entire week. It was by far the deepest talk I went to and it really gave me perspective on how fortunate we are to all be in Cannes or even just a student at the University of Miami.

Activation Blizzard Presents Call of Duty

From Game to Cultural Phenomenon

The next talk I went to was Call of Duty where I listened to Johanna Faries, the general manager of Call of Duty, Activision, speak. She put into perspective the importance of video gaming and COD that 4/10 humans on the planet are gaming. She emphasized the importance of social connectivity which can be done in COD but also by watching and interacting with streamers, which has become extremely popular, especially since COVID. Something interesting that they did was made an effort to repair some broken relationships with key influencers which really showed they cared about their audience. They got on the phone with individual streamers and gave them access to information early to make them feel special and like they were a part of the community.

Hearst Magazines Presents Alex Cooper

What Brands Can Learn from the Personality Economy

The last talk of the day was by Alex Cooper! I was really excited to see her speak. To be honest, I had not really kept up with Alex Cooper and maybe only watched one episode of Call Her Daddy in my life. I just thought it could be interesting to hear someone in the entertainment and influencer space speak. However, I was extremely surprised and really enjoyed her talk! She was an extremely engaging speaker and I can tell there was a lot of work and thought into building her own brand. There is definitely a reason she is so successful and it is not that she just randomly blew up one day like I had thought. I really admired her talking about the female aspect of her brand. What has helped her be so successful is she gained a tightnit fan base by being 100% authentic and almost oversharing at times. She made an interesting point that if men on a podcast talked about the same content she did, such as, dating and sex, that they would not be as scrutinized and it would be more overlooked. To wrap up the talk she took pictures with us and she also announced for the first time she is making a media/ production company to give a platform to smaller female creators!