Three Minute Happiness

James Cooper

About this time last year I was, frankly, having a whale of a time in a swimming pool in a villa in the south of France, pretending to go the Cannes advertising festival. As all my old chums set off for Cannes I have just returned from a wet field in Manchester, Tennesee and you know what, I couldn't be happier.

Ok, I get these emails inviting me to lunch at Cannes and texts from people on boats and all that la-di-dah and I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be there. Who wouldn't, it's a gas. But having traded a semi high profile job in Advertising for a job at a place that continually needs to remind people that we don't do advertising, where are the perks goddamnit?

Well, I just got back from a most incredible weekend out in Tennesee. We are working with the guys that put on the Bonnaroo music festival. For those of you in the UK, Bonnaroo is like Glastonbury, but bigger - and I am not exaggerating - a zillion times better. We are trying to help them become more of a media entity that exists longer than four glorious days in June.

Brands were relatively inconspicuous at the event. Of course there were sponsorships. Fuse TV had a pretty cool barn where you could charge up phones, use the net, cool off (it's hot, damned hot there) ride a bucking bronco etc. Fruictus had a good tent with hundreds of girls queuing in the morning to get their hair washed while other girls sang karaoke. There was a Nokia tent but it looked so boring we never went in it. Gibson guitars had a great idea - they set up 10 amazing guitars and bose headphones and allowed people to jam to themselves for as long as they liked. I'm not a guitar freak but I would imagine they were pretty pricey. The headphones themselves were worth 200 quid. There was no lock on them or anything. At Glastonbury some scouser would have had them away before a hippy could play the first few chords of 'Stairway...'

So this is of course the challenge. How do you create a meaningful experience that resonates with many without being in your face. I'm nowhere near working that out, especially having left half my brain at the Sigur Ros gig, but it seems simple in theory: be useful and don't be a ***. We'll see next year if we can pull something off for our partners.

Another thing that I noticed was that out of 90,000 people we were the only English people there. This is the first time I have experienced this in the states. You can usually hear or spot some pasty Brit like me lurking in the corner. John Hegarty made the point when he was at BBH NY that to crack the US you had to get out of New York. I think he's right. I assumed there would be loads of New Yorkers on our flight to and from Nashville. Not so. On our return flight we did bump into Sean Avery  (the Ice Hockey equivalent of Theirry Henry) who is very into his music and was also quietly digging Sigur Ros with us. Nice to see an uber celebrity just chilling and genuinely liking great music.

For those of you who are also into music the highlights were The Raconteurs - Jack White and friends on fire. B.B.King, still rocking at 82 years old. My Morning Jacket, a band I had not heard of before getting to the States but who played a five hour set from 12 to 5 in the morning. Bonkers video clip here. And Sigur Ros; where I was lucky enough to be backstage to witness, by all accounts, one of the most impressive festival performances in recent history.

All good stuff. All good stuff I never would have seen had I been packing my bags for Cannes. There's a whole world out there folks.