Sex matters, WeChat ads, film stars, and news from elsewhere
Good morning, delegates!
OK, officially it’s day three, and your correspondent is already exhausted, but we all know it’s unofficially day one. Deep breath, here we go. This daily email from Quartz is your guide to all the news and chatter from Cannes Lions 2016.
It’s going to be a beautiful, cloudless day, with a high temperature of 25°C (77°F). Try it, you’ll like it!
Yesterday’s highlights at the festival
Sex matters, but brands are too prudish. Cindy Gallop, the legend who once led BBH, tried to get her audience to open up about the topic: “People have sex in cars. The automobile industry spectacularly fails to ever acknowledge that, or to allow that to influence product design. The mattress industry is failing to acknowledge that people have sex in bed. They’re not allowing that to influence product design, either. The kitchen industry is failing to acknowledge that people have sex on kitchen counters. Honestly, I could go on and on.” And, of course, she did, to an enthralled crowd.
Why WeChat was slow to adopt ads: ”We need to build a system where users are very naturally in touch with businesses and service providers,” said Davis Lin, of parent company Tencent. “We build that habit, and then we move into advertising.” The app, which provides an array of services for 762 million users, mostly in China, only launched its main ad product last year. Lin said WeChat doesn’t like pure brand advertising, instead favoring calls to action.
Creating your own reality. “1 + 1 = 2 is a belief, not a fact,” argued Nir Wegrzyn, the CEO of BrandOpus, in a metaphysical morning session. He said brands shouldn’t attempt to make rational arguments to consumers but instead use images to “create reality.” To buttress the point, he had artist Ori Gersht discuss the use of technology to form perceptions. “The camera is not recording the world,” Gersht said. “The camera is constantly creating the world.”
“What do Coke ads tell us? They say hi, it’s Coke, we’re still here.” That was the blunt assessment of marketing professor Byron Sharp. He’s a skeptic of ad targeting. OK, what he actually said was, “Targeting is pretty dumb. It’s like, ‘I’m going to assume that all my customers look like this. And that only describes about 20% of them, but oh well.'” Sharp argued in favor of campaigns with mass reach, because most customers of a product buy it just once a year. “You have millions of people whom you mean almost nothing to,” he said, but they account for a large portion of sales.
Brian Eno defended humanity. Despite generating his latest album with an algorithm, he said humans are still necessary to make great art. “What really matters is what you put in at the beginning and how you make use of what comes out at the end,” Eno told an audience that filled up the Forum as well as an overflow screening room.
What everyone is talking about
Wasn’t the film festival last month? Cannes Lions is packed with Hollywood stars this year: Gwyneth Paltrow, Will Smith, Mindy Kaling. Channing Tatum is here to launch a new vodka brand. Execs, too: Harvey Weinstein and Leslie Moonves, among others. Plus, for the first time, Lions Entertainment will be held on Thursday and Friday. Today’s silver screen session, at 10am in the Lumiere Theatre, includes BBH founder John Hegarty and Steve Golin, the CEO of Anonymous Content, which produced The Revenant, Spotlight, True Detective, and more.
Football. That’s soccer to us Americans. Here is just enough information to pretend you already knew that Euro 2016, the quadrennial European football championship, is going on right now across France: Ronaldo missed a penalty kick on Saturday, endangering Portugal’s chance to advance, but that won’t stop him from appearing shirtless in ads around the world. France won its group, though it played poorly against Switzerland last night, drawing 0-0. My photo, below, of people watching the match along Rue Félix Faure. Knockout rounds begin on Saturday.
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News from around the world
Apple pulled out of the Republican National Convention. The tech giant, which has provided funding for Republican presidential conventions in the past, won’t be supporting this year’s event, which takes place in Ohio in July. Why? It’s uncomfortable with Donald Trump and his political views, sources say.
Canada made assisted suicide legal. The Canadian parliament passed legislation in favor of physician-assisted suicide, making the nation one of the few in the world that allows terminally ill patients to request a doctor’s help in dying. The law applies only to Canadians and permanent residents so as to prevent suicide tourism.
Italy’s anti-establishment party won two local elections. The Five Star Movement’s victories in Rome and Turin were seen as a rebuke to prime minister Matteo Renzi, who faces parliamentary elections in 2018. Rome elected its first female mayor, 37-year-old Virginia Raggi, who vowed to reform the city’s finances.
The Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA finals. They beat the Golden State Warriors in the seventh game of the series, 93–89. It’s Cleveland’s first championship in the basketball franchise’s 46-year history.
Matters of debate
Monday’s England-Slovakia soccer match could influence the Brexit vote. If past evidence is anything to go by.
E. Coli makes scientific experiments take too long. A group wants to replace it with the world’s fastest-growing bacterium.
Computer science grads are making a mistake. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham says they should join the next Google, not Google itself.
Surprising discoveries
The Tesla Model S can serve as a boat for short periods. Elon Musk says it’s definitely not recommended, though.
Underground caverns may link the US and Mexico. Eyeless Mexican catfish were discovered inside a Texas cave.
NASA is using satellites to get better emissions data. The world’s self-reporting standard is notoriously unreliable.
Our best wishes for an inspiring day at the festival. Please send any news, tips, star sightings, and manifestations of your own constructed realities to me, Zach Seward, at [email protected].
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