Archive for the ‘cannes’ Category

Looking Back on Our Burning Question at #Canneslions

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010


“Wow!”

That was my first line to kick off our seminar at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on Friday, June 25. “Wow!” is also the easiest way for me to describe the amount of work we put into the event, and the combined reactions of those who had a chance to join our seminar. After months of planning and preparation we pulled off our first-ever seminar in Cannes at the annual gathering of the world’s leaders in advertising and marketing. Although I am still in a bit of a daze since coming off the stage nearly two weeks ago, my mind is already racing to develop ideas for the next big way that we can spread the next evolution of marketing. But before rushing on to what’s next, I want to capture and celebrate what we pulled off here.

Before I go on, though, I suggest that you invest the 45 minutes to view our complete seminar footage, which is up and available here. Or if you’re really time-strapped, first check out some highlights in the YouTube video above.

Recap

Way back around October 2009, our President, Jay Woffington, and I had lunch with Jim Stengel, former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble and now global speaker/consultant and professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. My book had just launched and Jim was continuing to spread his belief in brand ideals. We talked about our common desire to change the way marketing is performed, and we agreed that there was no better place than the annual Cannes Advertising Festival—a place where advertising and marketing leaders from around the world gather once a year to judge the best work, compare notes on where the industry is going, and bring back lessons that might be applied to the incredible changes surging through business and society today. We decided to team up and the folks at the Cannes Lions organization were excited to have us onboard for a seminar in late June.

In retrospect, deciding to do a seminar in Cannes and getting agreement from its leaders was the easy part. The real challenge lay in deciding what to do on our big stage. Thankfully we had some help. Two of our top creative leaders at Bridge Worldwide, Jason Bender and George Alexander, came up with the idea of asking a Burning Question. They argued that people in our industry are spending too much time searching for answers to questions such as: “What percentage of my budget should I spend on digital?,” “Do I need a new ad agency?,” and “What should my Facebook strategy be?” They reasoned that marketers are spending too much time looking for answers in new media tactics, and are therefore missing the big, fundamental shift that is happening in business and society. Their idea was for Jim and me to ask our Cannes audience a Burning Question, that, when asked, could help organizations hit the reset button and fundamentally adjust their methods to not only improve business results, but also improve life for customers, employees, stakeholders, and society overall.

To prepare for the event, Jim and I set up interviews with key leaders at some of the world’s largest marketers in the world. We were blown away to get 100% of our requests accepted from IBM, AT&T, Kraft, P&G, Levi’s, Luxottica, Pepsi, and Samsung. We flew camera crews around the country to ask these leaders our Burning Question and learn about how they recognized a need for change, the initial efforts they are making to shift, and the business and stakeholder benefits that are resulting from these early efforts. We were surprised to hear similar stories, and eager to share them with our audience in Cannes and beyond.

And to engage with more than the relative handful of folks who can go to Cannes, we sought to bring marketers around the world into the discussion. On BurningQuestion.com we asked people to post what they believed are the questions we should be asking ourselves. And we even ran a contest to bring two people over with us based on their personal efforts to improve the marketing world. Our winners were Stan Phelps, who is pioneering a new way to “give a little something extra” through his Marketing Lagniappe project, and Tyson Adams, a budding “philanthroprenuer” who just started a business called liveGLOCAL, that sells high-quality coffee and provides books for children in Laos for each bag sold. Both guys are incredible leaders who will continue to drive the next evolution of marketing in their own unique ways.

The Results

After a week of final-final preparation and taking in the other seminars and award-winning work in Cannes (see my blog posts here, here, and here), I was very eager to finally take the stage on Friday. Overall I was very pleased with the seminar. As you can see in the full-length video, we did a lot of things to drum up excitement and ensure that no one was disappointed to be sitting in our session on a Friday afternoon. I think we were able to weave together many threads that were running through Cannes all week and give the group something to thinking about, our Burning Question:

“How can we, in marketing and business, hold ourselves to a higher standard to create a positive impact on those we serve, our employees, and even the world?“

After the seminar we invited everyone in the audience up to the roof of the Palais to continue the conversation. I loved the chance to meet people from places as diverse as Ecuador, Turkey, India, and Australia—all struggling to figure out where the marketing world is going, and all coming away with some new thinking that they can apply to their brands and businesses. I gave away a few hundred copies of my book and collected a pocketful of business cards from potential clients, partners, and even competitors who wanted to keep talking about how we might work together toward this common goal. (Check out some of the after-seminar photos below…)

I find that it’s always hard to look at the time and money investment of an event like this and figure out if it was worth it. This was the biggest thing our agency has ever put on, and ultimately we are betting that by driving the industry conversation forward we will attract new clients and further build our business. Just like all of you, we are betting that we will succeed by creating Marketing with Meaning.

The work is not over, however, as we’ve come back down to earth and back to our desks and day jobs. We are working on plans to further share our seminar and the hours of amazing interviews footage with industry leaders. Jim and I even have a few requests to repeat the performance at industry events and corporate training facilities.

And, of course, I’ve already started thinking about what we could do in Cannes next year. I think the topic will only be hotter in 2011, and we want to continue to build on the momentum we have started. I would love your ideas and feedback in the comments below!

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Samsung Keeps Recharging Along

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

A few weeks ago I got an interesting phone call out of the blue: The Samsung Mobile marketing team was preparing to announce an expansion of its recharging stations and wanted to see if I could fly out to the UCLA campus to meet with Korean reporters covering the event and explain how this effort represents the next evolution of marketing. I couldn’t make the trip, but we ended up filming B-Roll video in Cincinnati that was translated into Korean and shared here and abroad as part of the big announcement. It’s not what I expected when I praised the Samsung recharging stations in my book, but I was extremely proud to be linked to a brand that is continuing to invest in this early example of Marketing with Meaning.

The Samsung recharging stations have become a fixture at airports around the U.S. To date the company has installed more than 300 units in 10 of the busiest airports in the country, and the units are accessible to more than 395 million passengers per year. While traditional advertisements are abundant and ignored at these airports, the Samsung recharging stations serve as beacons of meaningful marketing. Even if you don’t use them, you can’t help but notice a company that is offering a free, value-added service to frequent flyers who need it most. When you do recharge, you will notice a transparent box highlighting one of the latest/greatest new Samsung phones.

What I love most about Samsung’s effort is that it follows a very simple formula for success. First, there is a Business Objective of reaching high-income air travelers who spend a lot of money on personal electronics such as mobile phones. Second, the brand looked for a higher-level need of these travelers that it could meet in a way that is relevant to its products. All you have to do is walk through a terminal and see people in suits and skirts sitting on filthy carpets so that they can recharge their laptops and phones to continue getting work done. Airports are always cash-strapped and naturally appreciate when a company can pay to add value to fliers’ lives. Many, many companies could have come up with the idea, but only Samsung took on the effort and expense to make it happen.

Flash forward a few years and we come to the big news in the U.S. and even in Samsung’s home country of Korea: The brand announced in April that it is expanding the recharging stations to college campuses across the country. In 2009 Samsung first experimented on campus with 40 stations in nine colleges. With this success, the brand now plans to have 187 stations in 20 of the largest universities by the end of 2010. The lucky colleges include large state-funded schools such as Texas Tech University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Maryland, and UCLA. Samsung launched the stations with local events and a Facebook contest.

Again, the brilliance of these recharging stations is evident on college campuses as well as in airports. Here, Business Objective is to gain sales among college students, who are heavy mobile phone users/buyers, and to offer the chance to win loyalty for a lifetime of electronics purchases. The basic need for power is similar on-campus; in fact, the laptop and cell phone are critical for today’s classroom and social coordination. Meanwhile, colleges are continually cash-strapped and do not always have the funding for adding power stations everywhere. So Samsung solves a short-term problem, and earns long-term loyalty among a Gen-Y audience that largely ignores traditional sell-and-tell advertising.

I was excited to praise Samsung’s brilliant effort for Korean television, but I was even more excited when its CMO, Sue Shim, agreed to appear on video for our Burning Question session in Cannes. As we coordinated schedules for her appearance, Sue mentioned that she has bought several copies of my book and they are using it for internal training.

That’s why I wrote the book, folks—to shine a light on the companies that are making the move to the next evolution of marketing, and to create something that they can use to fundamentally change how they perform the marketing function.

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Burning Question Contest: You Could Win a Trip to Cannes

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

A few weeks ago I announced that Jim Stengel and I will be taking our message to the annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June. We believe that there is no better place to start a revolution in marketing than this annual gathering of some of the biggest and best marketers and advertising agencies in the world. Our goal is to uncover a “Burning Question” that, when asked, helps elevate our work to unheard of higher levels. And for a few weeks now we’ve been gathering suggestions from people about what this Burning Question should be. After all, this is an issue that touches more than the relative handful of folks who get to fly to the South of France. Today, we are taking this open source involvement to the next level as we announce a contest that will send two individuals to join us at our seminar on Friday, June 25.

We want to bring two people who are just as passionate about changing marketing as we are—but who might not have the resources to get there on their own. We are looking for people who have had success in making change at their organizations, and have taken steps to share their lessons with the broader marketing world. We invite people who work at big or small companies, people who have shared lessons on blogs or classrooms, and people who have worked in marketing for one year or a lifetime.

Our team has put together a short application process for people to make their case. Jim and I will select winners based on the quality of their submissions. The only major limit on entries is that we are only able to take folks from the United States and Canada. I was bummed that we had to limit to this group, but contests are a legal nightmare, and we would have had to adapt rules to each nation’s laws (a cost much larger than sending people).

The prize is pretty damn cool—a chance to fly out to Cannes, participate in the event, meet passionate marketers from around the world, and help spark a revolution. Of course we will ask winners to be active participants in driving the buzz before the event and sharing the experience on the ground from Cannes—mainly through blogging and Twitter.

So if you are a meaningful marketer who wants to change the world in Cannes this summer, fill out an application and start driving support from your friends and followers. I look forward to seeing your responses—and to seeing two entrants in Cannes with us in June!

(Official rules here)

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