By Ingrid Prowse, Senior Account Director

Cannes! I’m here. There were a few flight delays, some issues registering because I didn’t have a print out?! (People, it’s 2012.) And umm, I’ve had to learn to type again so lets just see how this goes…

So after I kind of figured out where the seminars were – there’s so much going on in there it’s a bit mental – I decided to sit in on one about Turning a Fighter into a Brand (maybe I sat next to Ben Beadman for too long?). Basically it was about Canadian athlete Georges St-Pierre, a mixed martial arts UFC champ, who’s turned himself into a brand that transcends his sport plus the role social media plays  in building, shaping and maintaining this status. I mean the guy has 2.9 million+ likes, nearly as many as me. Heh.

No one really introduced themselves properly so it was a bit confusing. It was ok but I don’t think there’s a huge challenge in turning someone who people already love into someone more people love…Key take outs (nothing new here):

- Engagement is key, involve fans at every opportunity

- You’ve gotta be relevant and authentic

- Learn from your critics

After that I went to the Independent Agency showcase which was better. Two companies in particular stood out: Prime, a PR agency based in Stockholm and El Laboratorio from Madrid.

Prime spoke about the focus being not only on content, but more importantly on context. Currently it’s all about post commercialism. We’ve gone from building brands to taking stands and earned media has shifted into earned business. People are shopping for what they believe in and are supporting through buying. Brands need to stand for something. There’s a much more coherent article in Contagious here: http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/2012/06/post-commercialism.php

El Laboratorio spoke about the importance of ideas and showed a nice case study for their client Bwin, a sports betting agency. In Spring 2011 Real Madrid and FC Barcelona played against each other four times in just three weeks. A perfect opportunity for Bwin, a main sponsor, to develop a social campaign that saw people betting their Facebook status. More here: http://www.ensegna.com/web/en/portfolio/project-bwin-juegate-tu-estado#all

After that I needed a beer.

Other stuff:

My bag now weighs 26 kilos. These are the stairs to the apartment I’m staying in. This was not a good combination.

 

 

Fashion is paramount in Cannes, as we all know. My two favourite looks from day one:

French learnt: Nous aurons 3 bouteilles de rosé s’il vous plaît

Ryan Gosling sightings: 0

Omar Epps sightings: 1

Weather: 27 degrees. See ya – I’m off for a swim.

Next update: Tomoz. Note that I’ve also found Sandro, Zadig and Voltaire and a whole heap more shops, so it’ll probably just be about clothes.