Yahoo! EVP Ross Levinson sat down for a discussion with Robert Redford this morning in a Cannes session entitled Content as Conversation Catalyst. Levinson kicked off by reiterating Yahoo!'s goal of aligning distribution with authors and providing consumers a personal digital experience on all platforms.
When Levinson asked Redford, "What makes a good story?", Redford responded, "Sex." After the hilarity dies down, Redford added, "something you don't know that hits you in the gut and heart. And informs you."
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Creatives young and old have had a love/hate relationship with Bob Garfield, who for the last 25 years has produced his "Ad Review" segment on Advertising Age. (His position on this? On a scale of one to five, few ads are total zeros and few ads are prize fives. Over his whole career the average ad has received about a 3.4, significantly higher than the average true quality of industry television advertising output at large.)
Ad bloggers, whether or not they agree with his arguments, arguably see him as the person who began what they continue today. He's also the author of The Chaos Scenario and co-hosts National Public Radio's "On the Media."
I ran into Bob at the Carlton this weekend, then later Monday in front of the Palais, sporting a decidedly cannois summer hat. (I didn't know at the time, but it was also his birthday.) He thoughtfully agreed to sit and talk at a nearby beachside restaurant -- which we only later discovered is probably the loudest atmospheres in all the land.
So forgive the sound on this bad-boy. Click below to see the video, and read the rest of this piece over at Yahoo! Scene.
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To say that Monday night at Cannes was a bit busier than Sunday night would be an understatement. The big event of the evening was the Dutch Young Creative beach bash. Those Dutch know how to party! But we'll get to that in a minute.
The night began at the Grand Hotel where DraftFCB and Campaign held their parties. The weather was perfect. Not too hot. Not too cold. There was wine, beer and delicious snacks. I arrived early and and was met a bit later by fellow yahoo! Scene scribes Angela Natividad and Ask Wappling.
Conversation ranged from the view to the impending initial Lions wins to the heat to French wine and cheese to golf to water skiing and even divorce. But no one really wants to read about a depressing topic like that on an advertising news site so we'll spare you the details.
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Tuesday brings the release of the Cannes Cyber and Design shortlists. Sample contenders for the Cyber Lion include Crispin Porter + Bogusky for Coke Zero's Fan 400, R/GA for Nike's Free and The Black Mamba, AKQA for Halo:Reach's Remember Reach, Goodby Silverstein & Partners for Adobe Museum, Wieden + Kennedy for Nike's Better World, Strawberry Frog for Education Trust's The Girl Store, Wieden + Kennedy for Old Spice's Response campaign, BBH New York for Google's Chrome Fast, Saatchi LA for Toyota's Swagger wagon and TDA Boulder for Webroot's Social Media Sobriety Test.
Sample contenders for Design include Digital Kitchen for The Cosmopolitan's Digital Experience, SapientNitro for Footlocker's Class in Session and The Mill for International Festival's 2010 Open Titles.
Taking the top spot during Monday night's Cannes Promo/Activation and Direct Lions was Romanian agency BV McCann which took home two Grand Prixs for Promo/activation and direct. The agency won for the work it did for Kandia Dulce.
Kandia Dulce is a Romanian chocolate bar that was originally tied to the country's patriotism with packaging that mirrored the country's flag. But when the economy tanked, the packaging became less relevant and sales took a hit. BV McCann came up with a tongue and cheek strategy which repackaged the product to look like the American flag, complete with stars and stripes and the tagline, "The taste of coolness."
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