Ban Ki-moon, Harvey Weinstein, Snapchat’s ghost, and news from elsewhere
Good morning, delegates!
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Today’s weather will likely include some light rain showers, which kindly waited until everyone got out of town. The temperature will be similar to the last few days, with a high of 30°C (86°F). Au revoir.
Yesterday’s highlights at the festival
Ban Ki-moon enlisted the big six for the UN. “I understand that this is the biggest gathering of mad men; I am sorry, but I have been told that that is some kind of a compliment,” the UN secretary general joked with the agencies’ chiefs, who came together with him on stage in Lumiere Theatre. “I have come here today for your help, and here is my pitch.” He’s working with Dentsu, Havas, IPG, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP to promote the UN’s sustainable development goals around hunger, inequality, and climate change. The new initiative, called “Common Ground,” is intended to convey that even the fiercest rivals can work together on important initiatives “for the common good.”
Harvey Weinstein predicted an even greater abundance of TV. The producer said the competition would come from new kinds of companies: “We’re at the stage where Netflix and Amazon are producing. Google and Apple are not far behind. They will be in the content business in the next second. They are going to emerge. They are global players, and they have the pipeline.” He also foresaw an ever-increasing variety of formats, including shorter films and TV episodes, but he had a quick reply when Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy asked, “How can you convince Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino to do 10-minute films?” Weinstein said, “That’s not going to happen.”
Entertainment Lions. At the second-to-last awards ceremony of the Festival, the Grand Prix in Entertainment went to Vrse.works for its virtual reality work for the New York Times. The Times earlier won the Grand Prix in Mobile for the advertising component of the same project. And in Entertainment for Music, the Grand Prix was shared by Jung von Matt, for the score of a moving Christmas ad in Germany, and Prettybird, for Beyonce’s “Formation” video.
BBDO withdrew an offensive ad that won a Lion. The work, by AlmapBBDO for Bayer in Brazil, suggested that aspirin is a useful aid in committing sexual assault. Bayer disclaimed any involvement, and BBDO said the placement was paid for by its local agency, which would make it ineligible for an award. “I told them to return it,” BBDO creative David Lubars said on stage yesterday. “Because I don’t want that kind of Lion. BBDO doesn’t want that kind of Lion.”
What everyone is talking about
Brexit. After waking up to the shocking news of Britain’s vote to leave the UK, everyone couldn’t stop talking about what it would mean. A previously scheduled breakfast panel to discuss the result on News Corp UK’s yacht suddenly became a lot more interesting, in part because the company’s biggest newspaper, The Sun, had campaigned in favor of leaving. “I think it’s a massive feather in the cap for the power of the press,” said David Dinsmore, the COO of News Corp UK. Richard Edelman, of the eponymous PR firm, said the vote illustrated “the rise of a person like yourself as the most trusted person.” On another panel yesterday, Vivendi CMO Lucien Boyer was reassuring about the French company’s interest in Britain: “We have no reason to turn our back to London at all. It’s a creative community.”
Snapchat’s ghostly presence in Cannes. The very-hot app was everywhere and nowhere at the Festival this year. Its logo loomed large over the Palais, La Croisette, and back cover of the official program. But where were the company’s executives? Few people knew. It turns out they were mostly hiding in plain sight just a few steps from the Palais in a gated house they erected for the week (pictured below, courtesy of Recode). The subtle ghost in the gate was the only clue of what was inside. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel attended a party there for agencies and other guests on Wednesday night. By Friday morning, the house was being dismantled as quickly as a snap disappears.
Plane reading
Behind Brexit: inequality in the UK. The vote to leave the EU was more than just about the financial crisis and increases in immigration, argues the Resolution Foundation’s Torsten Bell. Long-standing geographic inequality had a strong hand in guiding people’s voting choices, and the country’s failure to address it should be a lesson for the future.
Spinning a loss into an opportunity. Sree Sreenivasan, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first-ever chief digital officer, didn’t lick his wounds after he heard his job was being cut, writes Jenni Avins for Quartz. Instead, he shared the news on social media, soliciting advice and providing a master class in how to turning a public firing into a masterpiece of personal branding.
The Panama Canal fiasco. The New York Times investigates the $3.1 billion expansion of the world’s most important artificial waterway and finds dodgy construction quality, huge cost disputes, and an uncertain economic future. Featuring riveting drone footage, the piece drives home the wide-ranging consequences if the canal’s expansion fails.
Racist hosts are the greatest threat to Airbnb. Its advertising campaigns frequently feature heart-warming stories of connection, but some users are complaining their race or gender has been used to discriminate against them. Quartz’s Alison Griswold describes how this, more than fights over regulation, data use or affordable housing, risks poisoning the popular home-sharing platform from within.
The perfect post-Brexit beach read. Lionel Shriver has written novels on everything from mass murder to obesity, but her latest really nails the are-we-facing-imminent-economic-collapse zeitgeist. In The Mandibles, the year is 2029, the dollar is plummeting, and the US government is printing money and vowing to default on its debt. All this turmoils proves quite inconvenient for the Mandibles, a wealthy family whose anticipated inheritance just went up in smoke. The Independent calls it “distinctly chilling.”
Our best wishes for a safe trip home. Please send any news, tips, agency peace treaties, and Snapchat sightings to me, Zach Seward, at [email protected].
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