While our Cannes Corespondent Angela Natividad is bringing you the goods from the Southern France this week, it's our job to remind you the mundane world of advertising goes on despite the fact we all seem to think Cannes is the end all, be all event of the the industry.
Now. On to the mundane. OK, we wouldn't call in mundane but it's not Cannes-quality, whatever the hell that might be. Charlotte-based BooneOakley is out with a three spot campaign for Bojangles' Restaurant. In each of the three spots it's clearly illustrated "Bo Time" is far more important than whatever you might be occupied with at the given moment. That includes getting pulled over by the cops, a marriage proposal and, yes, impending birth.
It's with pleasure today that I discovered I lied in my last piece - that depressing waiting room-looking area isn't the only spot for screening ads in Cannes this week. A real-life theatre in Level 1 of the Festival screened a bunch of body care ads this afternoon.
I'm gonna spare you more starry-eyed harping about how OLD SPICE BRINGS JOY TO ALL THE UNIVERSE. Here's other stuff that stuck out, and at the end, a reflection on Axe.
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Here's the first few shortlists that have emerged from the Cannes 57th Annual International Advertising Festival:
Promotional and Activation
Public Relations
Direct
Radio
Outdoor
Media
press
This is what I know about Cannes:
- It is humid, but not always sunny; often it rains in torrents, and street vendors make a nice profit selling umbrellas to unprepared visitors outside the Palais des Festivals. Be smarter than your deluded sun-thirsty colleagues: pack a spring coat and your own parapluie.
- For wifi that doesn't cost 20 euros a night, you go to a flea-bitten hotel on a side street, not a Croisette institution. I quite like Hotel Athenee, which is cheap (that's our style) and also 5 minutes walking distance from the Palais. Basic amenities are lost, but dude, we're talking about free wifi.
- If you are here for a conference, don't bother packing a swimsuit. You'll be too tired from long nights drinking to want much sun play, and anyway, private companies rent the nice parts of the beach so important people can feel thus at your expense.
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It isn't what it used to be, but there's something about Cannes that still excites. It's a place apart, where you're plunged willy-nilly into a life that doesn't belong to you for an inordinate amount of time. For that reason, alighting on it yearly feels a bit like coming home, and the expectation that rises inside is a welcome feeling.
I arrived around 1 in the morning, following a long train delay in Paris thanks mostly to a workers strike. (This is normal.) Because it's a small town, I walked to my hotel: 6 minutes from the train station. This is a convenient city once you know it, and despite the constant barrage of tourists and entitled conference folk, it doesn't change much.
I am staying in a place that lacks sex appeal but has free secured wifi and is clean. The window has an excellent view of Curves, an American weight-loss chain that caters primarily to working women.
It's funny how the sight of something you haven't seen in a long time takes you elsewhere: Curves, an unlikely nostalgic device, brings me back to Oakland's business district, where I contemplated registering on my lunch breaks until a friend told me I'd be joining "fat camp for deluded feminists." I didn't think about it again.
But you're not here for reminiscences of lost fitness aspirations; you're here to read about the Lions. That's cool, let's get down to business.
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- Last night Mullen faced Digitas in the first-ever Mullen versus Digitas Ping Pong Tournament. (Nice girl through the guy's legs treatment)
- College Humor helps BP get its Domino's on.
- No. Your Dad does not want a tie for Father's Day this year. Wait, does anyone wear ties anymore?
- Six Flags and Walmart have partnered to offer customers discounts to Six Flags when shopping at Walmart.
- To raise awareness and money for the Greater New Orleans Foundation Gulf Coast, San Francisco-based Pereira & O'Dell are...opening a satellite office off the coast of Naknek, Alaska.
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Claiming the decision had nothing to do with PETA's effort to highlight its treatment of baby elephants, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, yesterday, announced it will end its search for a public relations agency.
With a $30,000 monthly retainer on the RFP Feld Entertainment VP of Corporate Communications Stephen Payne told PRNewser, "We received a very positive response from over two dozen firms and were in the process of whittling that down when we took a hard look at all the proposals and a hard look at our staff internally, and came to conclusion that we could do most of what we were looking for in house."
Of the search for a PR firm, PETA EVP Tracy Reiman said, "Ringling is a public relations nightmare waiting to happen. There's not a PR team in the world that is slick enough to sell the beating of baby elephants, the whipping of tigers, and the use of chains, bullhooks, and electric prods on animals--all for the sake of a few cheap tricks."
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Like Rocky Balboa returning to the ring for his last fight, Y&R Brazil, along with Energy, has given the now 70-year-old football great Pele another chance to work his magic against Argentina on the field. After a tough first half, Pele gets it together and finally scores.
Called 1284, the video, which begins with Pele uttering, "If I could replay my life, maybe if I scored my last goal with the Brazilian Team, I'd like that," was created for Brazilian mobile telecommunications company Vivo which is Brazil's national team sponsor.
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Unless this video has an encoding problem, it looks like its creators didn't make the soundtrack long enough to match the video portion. But who really cares about that crap when the video gives us a detailed aftermath-style view of what was most certainly an amazing night of Axe-Style partying on a boat?
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Thank God there are still countries out there that have no problem with their stewardesses (yes, not flight attendants) stripping down to their bikinis (because all stewardesses wear bikinis under their uniforms in these countries) to wash their airplanes. And, they don't even mind when the stewardesses' bikini-clad bodies become all soaped up like a good bikini car wash girl.
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