» Cannes 2012: day 2 » The White Agency

By Ingrid Prowse, Senior Account Director

Slightly hungover but with a really good omelette and café au lait chowed down, day 2 began. First I went and saw JWT’s Junior Worldmakers. A seminar about what 3 kids can teach you about creativity. They chatted to 2 awesome little dudes: Jordan Casey, a 12-year-old from Ireland who began his tech career at nine years old when he started blogging and developing websites in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Felthy, you guys would be firm friends.

And Caine Monroe, a nine-year-old who spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store in East LA and invited the world to play. Check it out – it’s super cool:

There was also a 12 year old girl but she spoke like she was 36 and froke me out a bit.

So here’s what we can learn from kids:

- All their ideas were quick to market ideas. They got them out there and then improved them.

- There’s a wisdom in not knowing, not knowing the barriers, not knowing problems, and being scalable.

- They were fearless. They just did it. They didn’t consider failure.

- They all started small and built on their ideas.

- The importance of the notion of play. Being childish isn’t a bad thing. Being curious, naive and playful.

Then I went and saw The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Can Your Idea Change the World, and I’m going to be honest here…I chose this because I thought the big man himself would be talking. He wasn’t and it was a bit heavy so I went shopping.

Then I came back and saw the Contagious: Better with the Brand seminar. They started it with a slide that said “Buy more shit or we’re all fucked”. I let out a little cheer given I’d just dropped over $1k on clothes. But then they went on to talk about how we’ve started to realise we consume too much. I wanted to walk out and return everything I’d just bought but um, didn’t.

I guess this is where you see themes emerging because they also spoke about purchasing with a social conscious. Brands have a role to play in society. The best brands are an interface to how they can make people’s lives better. And consumers are reconsidering the reason for repurchasing (we’re getting skeptical about the need to upgrade so often). It’s not just a result of the recession. And more and more people are looking for the services that wrap around the product.

Nice case study on Chipolte, a chain of restaurants located in the States, UK and Canada. They have a mission statement called Food with Integrity, are using organic ingredients, and serve more naturally raised meat than any other restaurant. More here: