Not sure many of us that attended the International Advertising Festival in Cannes last week will be able to look at a glass of rose for a while. Although numbers were down this year, it was deemed a huge success, especially for digital advertising.
My highlights were the interview with Biz Stone and an 81 second chat with our CEO Steve Ballmer who did a little piece on camera with me for an internal meeting.
Two very different men, heading up two very different companies but who are both working towards a connection and targeting nirvana.
In Steve’s seminar on the Wednesday and during my time with Biz, they both talked of how brands are benefitting from the data digital advertising can provide to help marketers make better decisions about how to spend their marketing dollars.
Biz said he was in town to scout for ideas for a subscription model for the bigger companies using Twitter. In return for the revenue, Twitter would provide additional insight to help those companies get a better handle on the conversations about their brand and maybe some help with heavy lifting/reporting.
Steve was excited about the prospect of all advertising being digital in the next ten years. He talked of bridging the gap between mobile phone, PC and TV and making software part of the creative and media process, making ads as relevant to the content and consumer as possible.
Just imagine a digital marketing world where all channels are joined up and there’s little waste. More relevant content married with targeted advertising to pay for it is what consumers want.
During the Cannes Debate on the Friday, Sir Martin Sorrell quizzed marketing chiefs from P&G, Kraft, J&J and McDonalds. He asked about advertising going digital in the next 10 years. The excitement was palpable although the feeling was maybe there had been too much talk about the channel and not enough about the creativity surrounding it.
But as I wrote at the time, “if it’s data and insight we’re after to make us better as marketers and seek out more value, it’s the technology enabling the creativity that’s going to bring us that holy grail.”
