Marilyn Manson, Shakespeare, stand-up, erotica, Jung & Harry Potter. Just another day at the office at Cannes Lions 2015

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By Claire Bridges, Founder Now Go Create and Cannes Lions Mentor 2015

claire4Print@nowgocreate

 

 

 

 

If you’re headed down to Cannes, then no doubt the big name creative rock stars (and maybe the actual rock stars) are grabbing your attention. Here are some picks including workshops and talks across the week from the edges too. If you’re not going but you want the inside skinny I’ll be sharing some of the best bits from Cannes via podcasts and blogs throughout the week too from the ICCO House of PR.

Get warmed up Ease in to the Festival gently and embrace the clichés early by unleashing your inner child with the Lego workshop on Sunday morning exploring co-creation from 11:30.

Get inspired Cannes is all about inspiring new lines of thought and exploring topics you probably wouldn’t otherwise consider. On Tuesday Professor Brian Cox is going to be talking through some of the key scientific principles that help us unlock some of the mysteries around us. The session will then attempt to show how these laws also apply to advertising. Sounds right up my street.

Get out of your comfort zone There aren’t many occasions where you’ll be permitted, nay, encouraged to talk erotica at work and this workshop looks fascinating. No idea how to apply it back at the office but that’s kind of the point. Erotica Before Internet – how muscles changed the world. Sunday 16:45.

Braille celeb culture – camera-phones at the ready…..Monday sees Marilyn Manson take the stage for the Grey annual music seminar – expect provocation and ‘outrage’. The music business is well represented at Cannes across the rest of the week with Will.I.Am, Mark Ronson, Natalie Imbruglia, Pharrell Williams and David Guetta all featuring.

Wednesday is an action-packed and celeb-tastic day with Kim Kardashian talking digital, Kenneth Branagh talking Hamlet to Harry Potter to The Guardian and the talent from HBO’s hit comedy VEEP discussing why political satire is a timeless form of comedy. Richard Curtis is in conversation with legendary ad man John Heggarty about the new UN campaign and that’s bound to be rammed. Jamie Oliver, Samantha Morton and Adrian Grenier also all featuring in workshops during the week. It’s not always immediately obvious what the celeb is bringing to the creative smorgasbord but it’s fun to rubberneck.

Channel creativity as a force for good 2014’s theme continues with many of the seminars leveraging this topic including Monica Lewinsky, the oft-described “Patient Zero” of online shaming, calling for an end to cyberbullying – Thursday 1230 Partnerships that galvanise social change sees Entourage’s Adrian Grenier and Aimee Mullins taking part in a debate about how celebrities and brands can work together to tackle society’s biggest problems and the opportunities this presents for both sides.

Get practical Whilst Cannes is all about sharing extraordinary creative there’s also a chance to hear from the strategists behind some of the leading campaigns on this year’s Warc 100 ranking to correlate that with what delivers commercially. Find out what they learned, and how they’ve applied those insights elsewhere.

Ideas in a hurry Given time is always an issue for PR folk it’s got to be worth spending 90 minutes at the ‘You only need 48 hours to solve a brief’ workshop between 11:30 – 1pm on Monday and at other various times during the week.

I’ll take up the invitation to ‘Become an ass-kicking copywriter in 25 minutes’ too. Thursday 1230 – 1300 and other times Lions Lounge.

Hear the client view Creative agencies may lead the way but clients are increasingly getting in on the action. Get an insight into the client’s perspective from brands including Nestle, Mars and airbnb in Wake Up With The Economist daily briefing 10:30.

Last year Heineken won 2015 Creative Marketer of the Year. Hear from 2 of their global team what principles the company is using to drive creativity and what we mere mortals might learn. Thirst for creativity 1700 – 1745.

Allow wiggle room Whilst you do need to plan if you really, really want to get into something, my advice is to leave wiggle room. Some of my most memorable bits have been things I stumbled upon or decided to go to at the last minute.

Make it last Keep a journal throughout the week to help remember what inspired you and to reflect in the weeks afterwards about what you learned and what you can take into your day-to-day work life post-Cannes.

Claire is founder of the UK’s leading creative training consultancy www.nowgocreate.co.uk and is the only PR professional globally working as part of the training faculty at Cannes 2015 a mentor for the Masters of Creativity 2015 programme alongside world-class industry experts following a stint on the PR Jury last year. Claire is an ex-WPP Consumer MD and Creative Director with over 20 year’s industry experience as a creative leader. She is the only person in the UK PR industry to hold an MSc in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership from City University London. Claire runs Unleash Your Inner Creative training for ICCO/PRCA.

For more information- www.nowgocreate.co.uk

Successful & tasteful VPRA-BPRCA activity in Antwerp

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The first mutual activity between both country PR associations was a real success – nice people, good food and vibrant city, what more do you want?

nederlands

No official presentations but an informal  culinary city tour through Antwerp, with regional specialties like herring with jenever, bolleke with roggeverdommeke, not the usual Belgian fries and chocolate….   It certainly spiced up conversations between Belgian and Dutch agency directors– who found much common ground and all look forward to future friendly cooperations. Linkedin profiles & twitter accounts were exchanged and BPRCA will send a board member to the jury of the next VPRA Awards in Amsterdam. So for any activity you may have in the Netherlands, contact us and we can point you to the right partner – and vice versa of course!

Contact: secretariat@bprca.be

ICCO President Receives PRSA’s Atlas Award

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As featured on PRSA.com:

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2014 – The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced today that the Atlas Award for Achievement in International Public Relations will be presented to David Gallagher, senior partner and CEO of Ketchum’s European operations and chairman of Ketchum London. The award will be presented at the PRSA 2014 International Conference during the opening general session on Oct. 12 in Washington, D.C.

The Atlas Award for Lifetime Achievement in International Public Relations is given annually to a public relations practitioner who has made extraordinary contributions to the global practice of public relations over the span of his or her career.

“David is a great ambassador for the public relations profession around the world,” said Joe Cohen, APR, 2014 PRSA National Chair. “For the past twenty years he has passionately helped promote the transformative power of public relations while bridging communications and fostering collaboration across many countries and cultures.”

Gallagher currently oversees Ketchum’s nine European offices and their specialist services, which include consumer public relations, healthcare communications, corporate affairs and social responsibility, public affairs, change management, and clinical trial recruitment.

He is a member of Ketchum’s global Executive Committee and chairs the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives. Globally, Gallagher is heavily involved in public relations industry organizations. He is president of the International Communications Consultancy Organization, the global umbrella network of 30 national PR agency trade associations, and a fellow and past chairman of the U.K. Public Relations Consultants Association. He chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Media, and was the 2013 PR Jury President for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“I’m deeply honored to receive this recognition, and humbled by the list of previous recipients, who truly have shaped what is now a worldwide community of professionals,” said Gallagher. “I’m a beneficiary of their important work which helps guide us at a time when a global conversation is stirring, more inclusive and urgent than ever before, about our collective and interconnected future. As communicators we are privileged to serve as stewards and architects of this conversation. It is a great responsibility, as well as a real opportunity to use communications as a force for good. I’m grateful to the PRSA community for its continued leadership and delighted to accept this award.”

The Conference will be held at Washington Marriott Wardman Park. A full lineup of speakers and registration information can be found at the Conference website. Discounted hotel and travel rates are also available.

About the Public Relations Society of AmericaPRSA is the largest professional organization serving the U.S. public relations community. With a mission to “advance the profession and the professional,” PRSA provides news and information, thought leadership, continuing education and networking opportunities; sets standards of professional excellence and ethical conduct; and advocates for the business value of public relations and greater diversity among public relations professionals. Based in New York, PRSA comprises 112 local Chapters; 14 Professional Interest Sections that focus on specific industries and practice areas; and the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), which is active at more than 340 colleges and universities.

H+K Strategies Interview with Buzzfeed’s Jonathan Perelman

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The H+K Strategies content team is busy in Cannes, doing interviews with various creative industry leaders and opinion-makers, and we will be sharing their content daily!

They chatted with Jonathan Perelman, GM Video & VP of BuzzFeed. From cat-food to Tony Blair and the New York subway, they covered a lot of ground…

 

“The European Qualifications Framework in Public Relations responding to the needs of the regional labour market” project implemented by The Polish Public Relations Consultancies Association and suppo

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From September 2013 to May this year, thanks to the financial support acquired by the European Union under The Leonardo da Vinci Lifelong Learning Programme, The Polish Public Relations Consultancies Association (PPRCA) completed the project “The European Qualifications Framework in Public Relations responding to the needs of the regional labour market“. The project’s Partner was the British organization Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA), which served as the host and support institution. Cooperation between PPRCA and PRCA was possible thanks to ICCO, which both organizations are members of.

 

The 12-person group of professionals, who were representing public relations agencies affiliated PPRCA, members of  The Polish PR Association (PSPR) and scientific centres, travelled to London in January 2014. The visit has been funded with support from the European Commission. The purpose of the one-week visit was to get acquainted with the system of higher education that equips young Britons to practice as a PR specialist, meeting with the heads of the most active public relations agencies in London, and meeting with representatives of the PRCA, ICCO and Skills CFA.

 

The idea, but also the result of the project, was to develop, by a group of participants, the recommendations programme of Qualifications Framework for specialists in PR profession in Poland. The visit gave the opportunity to gather deeper knowledge of work conditions in Great Britain’s PR industry. Meetings organized in London resulted in preparation of case studies regarding best practices for training and skills development in the work of public relations experts. That could provide a benchmark for the Polish market.

 

“We are very pleased that PPRCA had the opportunity to initiate and implement this project. We will try to continue this project in the future, using the learned lessons and new experiences. Certainly the closeness to formulation of trade frame qualifications will contribute positively to the further development of the Polish industry and the position of PR specialist profession. PPRCA is also very grateful to PRCA and ICCO for supporting in project realization” – said Norbert Ofmański, president of the board of PPRCA.

 

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

 

Contact:

Magdalena Pokrzywniak
Polish PR Consultancies Association

tel. +48 22 55 53 330
mob. +48 531 84 84 72
mail: magdalena.pokrzywniak@zfpr.pl

H+K Strategies Interview with WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell

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The H+K Strategies content team is busy in Cannes, doing interviews with various creative industry leaders and opinion-makers, and we will be sharing their content daily!

On their final morning at Cannes Lions our reporters sat down to interview Sir Martin Sorrell. They covered off topics including the future of the industry, where he is at his most creative and his advice for young people entering the industry.

H+K Strategies Interview with Buzzfeed’s Jonathan Perelman

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The H+K Strategies content team is busy in Cannes, doing interviews with various creative industry leaders and opinion-makers, and we will be sharing their content daily!

They chatted with Jonathan Perelman, GM Video & VP of BuzzFeed. From cat-food to Tony Blair and the New York subway, they covered a lot of ground…

Just like the Future, PR doesn’t fit in the containers of the past: ask Millennials!

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Guest blog post by Pascal Beucler, SVP & Chief Strategy Officer of MSL Group

So the question is back again, as the Cannes Lions Festival has started: why is it that the PR industry is not “more creative” – if creative at all?

With 60% of PR professionals and 69% of clients believing that “the PR industry lacks big ideas” (according to the Holmes Report’s 2013 Creativity in PR study), it looks like the answer is not very encouraging….

In my humble opinion, there could be some sort of misleading-ness here and a quite unfortunate semantic misunderstanding.

When you hear people telling you that PR professionals are not good at putting forward and driving “big ideas”, what these people actually refer to, and “come from”, is the traditional mindset of advertising: for them, a “big idea” is still what organizes a 30 second commercial, and is eventually carried through collateral material.

No need to say that this vision is a bit outdated.

Let’s look at figures: three years ago, TV commercials still represented 55% of cases. In 2013, digital channels, and particularly social media, jumped to 85% of the cases, “making it by far the most-used channel in the competition” (See “Why Creativity Sells” in Sunday, June-15-2014 Lions Daily News 2014).

I would argue that, in 2014, the only valid criteria when it comes to judging creativity is today’s Engagement environment.

A creative campaign is above all a campaign, which creates a high level of engagement with people and communities.

(The rest is literature, or food for endless debates in ADs’ clubs)

Having been one of the three judges, together with Marnie Kontovraki, Global Heineken Consumer PR Officer, and Michael Frohlich, Managing Director UK and EAME Consumer Marketing Practice for Ogilvy PR, for the inaugural Young PR Lions competition at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, I lived a vibrant and very insightful experience with 14 teams from 14 countries, with each team comprising two young agency PR professionals, all Millennials born after 1985 – an experience which brutally challenges the current doxa on what creativity is about.

It’s so inspirational to see the hunger and passion with which these young professionals are taking up Citizenship challenges – but then that shouldn’t surprise us: as a global survey MSLGROUP ran last month in 16 countries underlined, Millennials today consider themselves empowered to help businesses and organizations change the world. As our survey reveals it, Millennials really are « Game Changers », with a « fresh » vision on business and Citizenship. (http://blog.mslgroup.com/why-and-how-businesses-need-to-partner-with-millennials-to-better-manage-resilience-relevance-resonance-in-troubled-times/)

My colleagues and I at the jury saw a lot of genuine enthusiasm and strategic clarity in the vision the 14 teams developed, a true maturity from a creative standpoint and a lot of agility in the execution : these Asian, African, European, Latin American Millennials are global, boundless minds and really bold folks – their future is bright, and so is the future of our industry. They definitely don’t see big ideas the good old way, but as powerful 360° weapons which actually transform and reinvent PR the way we used to do it. And no need to say that it’s all digital and social, therefore effective and costless.

Many insights provided by the teams were about Millennials’ commitment to make the world a better place. « Rouse the Millennial Army ! »,  « We can change the world ! », like one of the awarded teams said ! Yes, they love to be part of the change they want to see, and that’s terrific.

Self-expression, storytelling, sharing, crowdfunding – all the key ingredients of what creates succes today in the world of PR (People Relations) are here, and it’s an amazingly refreshing and rewarding lesson. The Millennials are passionate about many things, global issues and causes, and they expect businesses, organisations and PR agencies to tap into their passion.

We should agree that the age of conversation is very different from the age of advertising, with its vertical “big ideas”. It’s now all aboutbig data and smart ideas, which is pretty different, in many ways:

  • the ideation and very often the content are largely “people generated”: tools like Spike, Trendsboard or Topsypro help gather “People’s insights” to deliver successful “People’s inside” campaigns
  • the tempo of guerilla marketing is real-time, with daily messages if needed, whether a viral video, a social game, an event etc.
  • the interaction between brands, agencies, people and communities is permanent, and fruitful

 

Over the past few years, we thus moved from mass propaganda, with its heavy bombardment of “big” and simplistic top-down messages, to multifaceted engagement strategies. Advertisers are good at bombardment, we – experts in PR, for People Relations – are far better at the latter.

Our PR “agency of the future” model should indeed derive business intelligence and data analytics to build creative content, nurture shareable conversations, and engage people and communities.

 

500_pascalbeuclerMSLGROUP’s Chief Strategy Officer, Pascal Beucler holds BAs in History and Language Sciences, a master’s degree in Linguistics and a post graduate degree in Semio-Linguistics. In 1987 he joined Intelligences, a subsidiary of Publicis, and in 1992 he became Managing Director. In 1994 he was promoted to Partner at Publicis Consultants, and then to General Manager of Carré Noir in 2001. Pascal is an Associate Professor at CELSA (Paris IV Sorbonne) and a visiting professor at HEC – one of France’s top business colleges. He has conducted research and published articles on various topics and in particular on the relationship between text and image. In 2005 Pascal was named Vice-President of Publicis Consultants | Worldwide, in charge of Brand Strategy and development of its international network.

PR So Good That No-one Minds It’s PR: Shareworthy & Newsworthy by Stuart Smith

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Guest blog post by Stuart Smith, CEO EMEA of Ogilvy Public Relations

Five years after PR got its own category we head again towards Cannes Lions 2014 wondering whether PR agencies will break through in the awards. Surely this will be the year? If it’s not, it will be for all the reasons we have outlined in the past. Can PR scale its great ideas across paid, owned and earned channels? Has PR convinced the CMO that what we do works? Can PR partner peer-to-peer with the other marketing disciplines? Are we adapting fast enough to the new integrated world of marketing and content?

The industry conceded its natural territory: A long time ago, no one is quite sure when, PR was implicitly dropped from being included in the phrase “creative industries”. Back in the late 80s PR agencies, good ones, had planning, research and creatives. They occasionally had advertising subsidiaries (specialists admittedly), bought media and even executed large direct mail campaigns. Somewhere in the intervening years PR allowed itself to be pushed into a box where it stood for press releases and stakeholder relations. Every discipline became micro-specialist in what they did. Hence the calls from clients in the 90s for Integration 1.0 where all disciplines came together simply ensure we didn’t trip over each other during a big product launch.

Clients know what they want from PR better than most agencies: Fast-forward twenty plus years and we see huge changes in the marketing, publishing and news industries driven by digital and social. Naturally brands are moving their budgets to reflect this and re-designing their own structures. If we are honest, agencies themselves are wrestling with how to adapt and become even more channel neutral and agile. A senior marketing client told me recently that “PR is uniquely placed to act as a bridge between the creative and the media agency for me. PR helps me develop campaign ideas that set the news agenda so we truly earn our media, not just buy it”

Clients are already impatient for the PR industry to adapt faster:  That’s why clients are looking for new levels of integration not just across disciplines but in the development of channel-agnostic campaign platforms. Brands want to create real-time, authentic conversations with (and between) their consumers about real issues which mirror their day-to-day, real-world concerns, conversations and the news agenda. That is the PR industry’s heartland. Yet, worryingly a recent UK PRCA survey said that 55% of clients would consider buying PR services from “another type of agency”.

A call-to-action (every great campaign needs one): That’s a lot of moving parts and some would say PR should be playing a bigger role in shaping the agenda. So how should PR respond? I will leave you with the challenge to complete this thought: “Brands and corporations would be better served by PR if….”

There is no more pertinent time like the Cannes Lions 2014 festival for us to consider how to complete that sentence.

@stuartsmith

 

500_stuart_smith@2xStuart Smith is the CEO of Ogilvy Public Relations Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He has over twenty years experience in communications. In that time he has held senior positions within consultancies and in-house and has worked across many industries and geographies in both the private and public sectors. His experience with media brands covers PR for CNBC Europe, The Economist conferences and the BBC (who he advised on digital and blogging strategies prior to their launch). He is also a keen follower of the changing face of the media and its business model and how this is influencing the art and science of marketing.

His experience of developing strategy spans a wide range of disciplines: change management programmes, acquisitions, disposals and rebranding; crisis management and issues preparedness; organisational effectiveness audits; communications and marketing; issues-led and public affairs campaigns; managing stakeholder relations across a range of NGOs; and the alignment of internal communications with brand repositioning programmes.

Why this year will really be PR’s year at Cannes Lions by Martyn Rosney & Niamh O’Keeffe

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Guest blog post by 2014 Young PR Lions contestants from Ireland

This time next week, we will be attending the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity representing Ireland at the inaugural Young PR Lions competition. The festival, now in its 61st year, is the foremost industry event in creative communications and advertising.

As part of our preparation for the competition, we have been reading up on festivals past. It seems that industry experts have been predicting that every year (since PR first became part of the festival in 2009) ‘will be PR’s year’. We thought it would be interesting to share our thoughts about what evidence there is to indicate that 2014 will be different.

In the first instance, one clear indication that PR is becoming a more inherent part of the Cannes Lions discourse is the inaugural Young PR Lions competition which was launched this year with support from ICCO, GolinHarris, H+K Strategies, Ketchum and Ogilvy PR. Setting up this competition is a very clear commitment by the industry to foster and cultivate emerging PR talent.

Secondly, 2014 is the 6th year that PR has competed at Cannes. Over this time, the PR industry has become more attuned to what will really appeal to the Jurors at Cannes and how best to showcase our industry. 2012 was a watershed year for PR at Cannes. After another year of disappointment for PR, the judges expressed disappointment in the entries from PR firms which lacked ‘big ideas’, being too tactical, stuck in historic structures of “having one person who is the client contact, the idea generator and also the budget keeper”. We’ve had time to reflect on this disappointment and build on it.

Lastly, everyone in the industry would agree that the PR industry is in a state of flux. We have to find new and more effective ways to identify and communicate to our audiences. As an industry, we have risen to that challenge and our imagination and innovation will be what sets us apart in years to come.

Hopefully 2014 will be PR’s year.

 

500_niamho039keeffe500_martynrosneyNiamh O’Keeffe @niamh_okeeffe and Martyn Rosney @martynrosney are both Account Managers at Wilson Hartnell, Ireland’s leading PR agency and Ogilvy PR’s Irish office. They will be representing Ireland at the inaugural Young PR Lions competition at the 2014 Cannes International Festival of Creativity.