Tuesday at Cannes Lions 2019

We kicked off the day at Dentsu Beach. We talked about brands and how advertising has evolved. The previous era of advertising was rooted in selling. As David Ogilvy once said, “the sole purpose of advertising is to sell more stuff.”

The new era of advertising is rooted in the idea of “brands for good.” The new way of advertising enables brands to improve lives in meaningful ways. These meaningful ways can be grouped into seven “need states.” Brands need to meet some of these “need states” to stay relevant and grow:

1. Momentum – making progress towards personal growth
2. Worth – feeling recognized and valued for who you are
3. Belonging – feeling part of something bigger than yourself
4. Simplicity – feeling nourished and balanced in a back-to-basics lifestyle
5. Rooted – feeling connected to nature and the rituals of traditions
6. Savvy – making the best of what we have
7. Purpose – living a life of meaning and impact

We went to Debussy Theater to hear Forrester discuss the value of agency creativity.

Key Quotes:

Dentsu came to the classroom to discuss experiential briefing.

Key Quotes:

“Identify the job to be done as the center of the brief.” – Sanjay Nazerali, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Dentsu Aegis

“All agencies should receive the exact same brief to make integrated executions that work to achieve the goals.” – Sanjay Nazerali, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Dentsu Aegis

We went back to the Debussy Theater to hear Mastercard talk about multisensory brand reinvention. They explained that we live in a world where miniaturization is happening -our screens are getting smaller. Virtually all objects will become smart and we will be talking to everything from our fridges to our phones, so brands need to become simpler visually while having their own sound, touch, taste, and smell.

Mastercard shared more details behind the redesign of their iconic logo – the new rendition removed all words and just has the interlocking red and yellow circles. They also created a brief for an ownable melody to be heard everywhere – customer call lines, in-store payments, advertising, and more. The challenging brief had some tough standards: pleasant, hummable, memorable, versatile (globally and situationally), not overwhelming. Mastercard considered over 2,000 tunes before landing on their melody – a great local and situational adaptation and visual “sonic watermark.”