The big news out of Cannes Lions today is that Twitter went down right before President Clinton delivered his speech. It returned and then went down again. As of this writing, it's still down. But that's not really news. Or it really should overshadow the other items of importance that occurred in Cannes today.
Eager to hear the former President speak, thousands lined up on the red carpet which stretches most the way down Le Croisette. Throughout the day, in advance of the speech, there were Clinton sightings in and around Cannes.
Once introduced by PJ Pereira, Clinton, who spoke on the topic of How Advertising Can Help Build a Better World, said, "we live in the most inter-dependent era in human history" and, focusing a bit on particle physics and string theory, he even went so far as to say that in our lifetimes, "you might live in a time that discovers there is another dimension beyond time, space and distance." Heady stuff.
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In its continuing quest to numerate all the goings on this week at Cannes Lions in France this week, SapientNitro is out with its third of five infographics. This version, called Winners, takes a look at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Media Person of the Year win, which topics are hot (social media, story telling), the fact that there are 44 cubes on the Cannes Lion stage, top awards winners to date by agency and by country and every other stat you could possibly imagine about the awards.
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Oh the horror! Just as former President Clinton is about to set foot on stage at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Twitter goes dark! Will he actually appear? Will he speak? Will he trip like President Ford? Will he share brilliance? The world may never know until Twitter comes back online.
Just another example of what happens when we put so much trust in a single infrastructure. Hmm, now will all have to resort to reading about Clinton's speech on crusty old blogs. How mid-2000's! In the meantime, RSS anyone?
Oh my. Goose bumps. Matt Harding, a guy who quit his job in Australia, traveled the world with friends, made a video of his travels (complete with personalized quirky dance moves) and because the video was noticed by Stride Gum, received funding for a second dancing trip around the world is...take a breath...back with yet another dance video.
His videos are moving tributes to the connectedness of the human race. When you strip away the borders and the politics, we are all really the same. We laugh. We cry. And we dance.
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In Cannes doing interviews for adforum, Angela Natividad sat down with Victor Knapp and Wesley Ter Haar of MediaMonks, an international creative and digital production shop that also hosted the most excellent Massive Music party last night.
Jumping right into things, Angela asked the pair what trajectory landed them in the world of advertising. Wesley had a fairly typical trajectory. After dropping out of highschool, he starting geeking around with friends and building websites. Victor, on the other hand...was a porn star. OK, he's just kidding. He went sailing. Did it for four years and accidentally ran into Wesley at Central Station in Amsterdam.
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There's a bit of a voting scandal brewing in Cannes today over accusations that some Media Lions judges were "ordered" to upport work from their own agencies reports B&T.
Media Lions juror Dan Johns and Ikon CEO told B&T, "Unfortunately after six days of judging the best work didn't win gold, that is a view held by a number of the jury members. In these situations you have two choices; either to sit back and do nothing or raise your hand and say enough is enough."
It appears Johns isn't going to sit back and do nothing. Johns and other jurors plan to take up the issue with Cannes Chairman Terry Savage.
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