I was very privileged to visit Cannes Lions last week from Thursday to Sunday as one of the official IAPI Festival Representatives for Ireland. This was the first official industry delegation to attend from Ireland and is in line with our goal of getting Ireland to more actively compete for Cannes Lions. Whilst not everyone was an official delegate, the final number totalled 60 from Irish media and creative agencies, including IAPI member agencies; Thinkhouse, Rothco, Starcom MediaVest, Publicis, Eighty Twenty, and PHD were all there.

Tanya Cawley and Tania Banotti brilliantly lead the industry representation from IAPI. There were also senior clients from Heineken including Marketing Director Sharon Walsh and Fiona Curtin and AIB Marketing Director, Tom Kinsella. We also had our two terrific Young Lions teams compete with the best young creative talent in the world, from Ogilvy and The Social House. They didn’t win, but they had an incredible career boosting experience when they took a brief and had to turn around a solution in just 24 hours. We could not have entered Young Lions without the support of Google in Dublin and Marek Wystepek, from Shutterstock who sponsored the Young Lions Teams. It was brilliant to have their support. Andrea Dalton Doran from Chemistry was there too on the Cannes Lions Training Programme.

Cannes Lions is in its 62nd Year and is a truly incredible celebration and showcase of the best creative talent in the world. It ran from 21st until 27th June at the Cannes Lions Headquarters, Palais de Festivals. It was 32 degrees last week in Cannes and I can honestly say I didn’t get to spend 5 minutes in the sunshine and to prove it, I haven’t even the tiniest little bit of sunburn. The reason for lack of a tan is the plethora of incredible dawn to dusk seminars, workshops and masterclasses followed by five Award Shows on almost every night of the Festival. Along the Croisette at Cannes, there are all the mega brands, including Facebook and Google with parties and food and cocktails all week long for delegates.

The number of global delegates at Cannes Lions this year was 13,500 and the entries to the awards numbered 40,000. The scale of the festival is hard to explain and it is a little overwhelming when you first arrive there but it didn’t take long to get your bearings. Alan CoxNot only is there brilliant work to see, there are fantastic talks with titles like ‘Become an Ass Kicking Copywriter in 25 minutes’ or ‘’Opening the Kimono on Killer Japanese Creativity’’. There were Masterclasses with Martin Sorrell of WPP and glimpses of celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Professor Brian Cox, Monica Lewinsky, Cindy Gallop, Marilyn Manson, Samantha Morton and Pharrell Williams who is described in the festival programme as the ‘’unstoppable one man culture machine’’. Mary J Blige did the Opening Night Gala Concert on the Carlton Beach. It is all neatly facilitated by the Cannes Lions App, which has every single event and a diary that you can plan and ensure you get to your favourite events and seminars.

No doubt if you have been on twitter this week, you will have been inundated with #canneslions tweets with glimpses of the best work, the frolicking on the red carpet and celebrity gossip and pictures of the brands who had yachts tied up glamourously at the Cannes Marina. It was a truly incredible experience.

Anyone who works in the creative industry in Ireland should make attendance at Cannes a serious budget consideration for 2016. It is worth it for the inspiration, the showcasing of why we all do what we do and the immense learning opportunity.

Most celebrities actually aren’t that special. I saw many of them and heard them speak at various presentations and very few have a truly great ability to communicate or inspire. The few who stood out and who were talked about most were Diana Nyad, Journalist and swimmer, who broke mental and physical barriers in a 53 hour distance swim from US to Cuba, Professor Brian Cox, Physicist who is an incredibly smart guy and Monica Lewinsky who repeated her cyber-bullying talk from her March 2015 Ted Talk on the subject of online shaming.
There were 150 talks at Cannes 2015. I made about 11 of them. The ones I enjoyed most was the one by Chuck Porter of the CP&B Agency and the ‘’Political Address from the Queen of Comedy’’ on political satire featuring Julia Louis Dreyfuss who is an actress, producer and appears in HBO’s Veep. The social media workshop I attended by Chicago Agency @socialdeviant was also terrific.
Cannes is not only very sunny, very hot and very glamorous where the Cannes drink of choice is rosé, it is incredibly slow and laid back. The French see no point whatsoever in rushing at any level. Getting a cup of coffee can take up to 40 minutes in small cafes and they just will not go any faster and shrug their shoulders if you are looking in any way impatient. The added taxi strike on Thursday, my day for travelling home, was a complete pain in the butt. The local taxi people were furiously objecting to Uber. It meant only public buses could reach the airport. My transition from Cannes to the airport took almost 3 hours –; it is normally a 30 minute commute.

Creating great creative ideas all looks so simple when you see all of the amazing work lined up at Cannes Lions. It would be terrific if the increase on Irish delegates from 7 in 2014, to 60 in 2015, could reach maybe 200+ in 2016 and not just more delegates, but more Irish entries. If you need convincing as to why you should get to Cannes Lions 2016, get in touch with me @orlaithb or orlaith.blaney@mccannblue and I will do all I can(nes) to convince you.