Every year Cannes seems to focus on a particular theme and two days in, data and what brands are doing with it seems to be topic de jour.
Given the whole, ‘data is the new (insert comment here)’ has been kicking around for sometime it’s no big surprise that it’s being discussed so much.
Monday’s opening Adobe presentation, Tuesday’s TED and a closing session in the main theatre entitled ‘Turning data into an idea’ show how prevalent the topic is this year.
Refreshingly however the festival of creativity hasn’t turned into the festival of 1100 0011 011.
The news regarding the changes at Fairfax and the announcement from News Australia has been a topic of discussion amongst the Aussie delegates and how the two media giants will evolve into media companies for the digital age will be interesting to watch. One media company that has digital in its DNA is the Huffington Post and their presentation yesterday was an early highlight. It certainly had the best/bravest opening line from a presenter I’ve ever heard.
Whatever your view on the Huffington post, its impact on how news is accessed online changed the game. They’ve now set their sights set on video and the launch of a 24hr news channel, Huffpost Live. Their point of difference? The user will be front and center in all-programming decisions. To put how active their readers are into context it took them 6 years to reach 100 million comments, 6 months later it hit 150 million and 200 million six months after that.
Their message of ‘re-connect – recharge – resonate’ is simple and effective but did seem to fall short when it came to demonstrating how brands are getting on board.
Recharge is an interesting one – Apparently the French consume more anti-depressants than any other nation on earth. They are also more likely to suffer from clinical depression than anyone else. For a nation that brought us croissants, Pol Roger champagne and afternoon sex this stat is somewhat surprising. There does seem to be a growing trend of people wanting to opt-out or de-stress their lives.
Adrianne Huffington believes that one of the biggest challenges faced by brands is how they tap into the zeitgeist of people wanting to disconnect. Her GPS for the Soul app taps into this as does Apple’s ‘do not disturb’ function on the new iPhone.
My personal highlight came at a JWT session. It focused on three young people from around the world. Two of them, a 12 year old app developer from Ireland, and a 9 year old arcade owner from LA, brought a smile to even the most cynical media bod.
I can’t recommend looking up Caines Arcade on YouTube enough and looking at what this young lad did with a few cardboard boxes and a passion for fun. It should be shown to every marketing department and agency in the world.
No doubt Hollywood are buying the rights as we speak.
GroupM
Chief Digital Officer
Danny Bass
Danny Bass: Does data kill or cultivate creativity?
20 June 2012