Why We Decided to Go to Cannes (Beyond the Obvious Reasons)

You know how sometimes you get asked a question that you think you should know the answer to, but instead you just freeze? We’ve been asked a number of times why our company — a “Measurement Agency” focused on tech and data — would even bother going to Cannes, the “International Festival of Creativity”. Another poignant version of this question is how a tiny 5-person agency expects to get any attention in a place where the heaviest of media heavyweights are chasing meetings with each other (It turns out, the second question is a bit more relevant, but we’ll come back to that).

Before we arrived in Cannes this year, we had a number of Big Questions swirling around in our heads. Did we bring the right power adapter? Check. Is our cell phone bill going to be gigantic this month? Of course. Have we gotten invites to all the “cool kid” parties? Absolutely not. And, are we trained up and ready to run this Catch Me If You Cannes 5K race at 7am on a Monday? Most certainly not.

But our really big question for the festival is this: how are marketers in 2019 supposed to be able to do quality Attribution while the earth continues to shift and crumble under their feet? Now, attribution is not generally a question that Creative Agencies wrestle with. But no one is safe from these realities, and attribution is at the heart of the most fundamental questions in the industry: Did our ads work? And what do we do next?

We’re deeply invested in the caliber of creative. But we’re also deeply in the weeds sorting out this attribution mess so that marketers know when their ideas are landing. And it’s hard work out there.

We certainly won’t belabor the volumes of hot takes outlining the erosion of trust in the industry; a dissolution catalyzed by Mark Pritchard & Keith Weed’s dual announcements accusing the advertising supply chain of waste and fraud. Nor will we contribute to the cacophony of bemusement caused by the explosion of logos on the Lumascape Martech 5000. (Just kidding. We love bemusing it). We’ll also refrain from trying to distill the ramifications of GDPR and the Ad Tech world’s scramble to adapt (or in the case of Google, simply abandoning it).

Mistrust, fragmentation, and ultra-walled gardens.

These are the 3 things rocking the measurement world right now and we’re getting ahead of it. Somebody’s gotta do it. And it’s going to require a ton of shrewd brains and coordination across the entire industry.

So, we’re looking forward to hearing some big announcements. Or at least some strong opinions. And if we don’t hear anything, we’re prepared to play private eye and ask tons of questions during dinner at The Intercontinental (just kidding, we can’t afford that place), brunch at La Californie (the radishes and butter dish is the best weird thing in the world), and lurking through the yachts in The Ad Tech Marina (™) .

Apart from this, we’re ultra excited about the best feature of Cannes: making great relationships with the outstanding people that go. We’re stoked about this part. That’s really our #1 goal: to make real, long-lasting connections with new doers in the industry.

And house music. Lots of house music.

A couple of the thought leaders we’re expecting to hear big things from:

And of course, we’re also looking for some serious quality time with our friends from:

If you’re on the ground at Cannes, we’d love to see you this week. Who else is coming? Shoot us a note and say what’s up.

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Cannes Lions 2019 Takeaways, Insights & Our “Double Bottom Line”