OK. I’m going to shut up about Cannes now. I always call it a pointless boondoggle but I have never been so I have no real right to condemn something I’ve never experienced. Before Bud Theisen of Alphabet Soup went to Cannes, he asked me if there were any questions I’d like to ask those in attendance. I said sure. With the viewpoint Cannes is just an industry circle jerk, I wanted to know why Cannes mattered. I wanted to hear it from the mouths of those basking in the glory of their company’s expense account.
While Bud did ask the question, it seems he asked is the event worth it rather than why it’s worth it. Two very different question but I’m not going to complain because the answers he got were great and can be summed up eloquently, “Fuck ’em if they don´t like it. We deserve it”.
Bud explains why Cannes is the perfect place to hold this industry event by explaining the ad industry sits somewhere between the Hollywood and porn, two other industries that travel to Cannes for their own back slaps.Bud says the event is the best thing in the industry for networking and at this year’s fest he met people from Turkey, India, Brazil, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Japan and Holland. Not exactly the people you meet at any old New York-based industry event. Bud even met a girl from a British agency who ended up sleeping on his couch because she couldn’t find a cab and was too drunk to give proper directions to take her home. See. Just that changes my mind about the event. Meeting new people in far away places who spend the night on your couch would certainly seem to make Cannes very much worth the trip and very important to the image of the industry. [Ed. So bitter, my friend. OK, OK. We’ll send you next year if only to get you to shut the hell up and stop bitching.]
