CANNES DAILY DIARY: Day 2 with Fran Luckin

“90% of all the creators in our much-vaunted ‘creator economy’ are average, if not crap. The outlying 10% that have some degree of talent are carrying everyone else.”

“The consumer doesn’t give a shit about your brand.”

“Early success in a career doesn’t necessarily mean that you got everything figured out right out of the starting blocks.”

“Don’t stop liking each other.”

These are your headlines. Hello. Welcome to day 2 at Cannes Lions. Or is it 3?

It’s been said before, but it needs saying again: it is hot here. Should you have an appointment at 11 am, and another appointment at 2pm, and neither of them are inside the Palais, you will spend the intervening two hours between those appointments simply trying to get from one place to the other in time. You will fail. You will experience this failure with sweat dripping down your back and pooling somewhere in your underwear, while you overhear an elderly American gentleman in a straw hat bellow, ‘Fuck me, Mabel, it’s like living inside a dog’s mouth.’ 

You will quite possibly be sharing a very tiny apartment with colleagues. Said apartment will have been advertised as ‘sleeps 8’ but will only have three bedrooms, one shower – and one toilet. This is tricky for girls, who are delicate about such things. You will find yourself calculating how much the landlord would mind if you were to faire pipi in his shower.

However. These things are trivial, mere bagatelles in the larger scheme of things, which is that you are in Cannes! Oprah is speaking in 30 minutes! The WhatsApp group is all a-clamour, with news that the auditorium is almost full – and you are still on the bus travelling into town from the accommodation you could afford, trying to make it in time with sweat pooling in the small of your back. And it is not yet 10 am.

Oprah is being interviewed by Phil Thomas, chairman of Cannes Lions, but really this is her gig and she’s running it. The quote everyone comes out remembering is this, from something Maya Angelou said to her: ‘Legacy is not your name on a building. It’s every life you touch.’ These are encouraging words to hear at Cannes, where it’s oh so easy to feel inadequate.  

Next you nestle into a seat in a cool dark auditorium to watch some of the Titanium finalists present their case studies. The Titanium Lion is still one of the most prestigious to win. The definition of this Lion is: ‘game changing creativity… (that breaks) new ground in branded communications with provocative, boundary-busting, envy-inspiring work that marks a new direction for the industry and moves it forward.’ No pressure.

Circus Grey Peru presents work for BCP bank which needs to come to South Africa immediately. Peru has a huge problem with cellphone snatching in the streets. Because the phones are active when they’re snatched, the robbers don’t have to unlock the screen and can drain people’s bank accounts in around 15 minutes. The solution is simple but brilliant: the bank built a function into POS devices in stores that lets people block their bank accounts using the POS machine, their ID number and pin code.  

Onward to another auditorium and Malcolm Gladwell chatting to Questlove about storytelling. It’s more like watching two friends have a chat about the creative process, with many descents down many rabbit holes. Questlove has talked elsewhere about the value of digression and distraction in the creative process (hard relate). So this convo covers yacht rock, DJing during COVID, and the fact that Anthony Bourdain fired three sous chefs because they violated the Billy Joel rule. Which is, apparently, that you shouldn’t play Billy Joel. Fair enough.

Questlove speaks about only learning ‘how songs work’ when he DJed online during COVID and could play music he liked rather than music guaranteed to make people party for a three hour set. He also speaks about how he had been an established musician for a long time before he became intentional in his song writing – the early years of The Roots had been about freestyling. The headline here is, a creative life is a process of learning and unlearning. And taking it all in. He says when he started exploring his own canon of music during the COVID online DJing sessions, he was surprised to find how much yacht rock he had. But ‘As an artist, you take everything in.’

Questlove tells an anecdote about touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and noticing how they would huddle together on stage between songs. He thought they were discussing the set list and making changes on the fly. After subsequent nights he realized this wasn’t what was happening and asked Flea, the Chili Peppers’ bassist. Flea said it was actually their habit to ‘just express gratitude’ to each other in between songs. The lesson here? Don’t stop liking each other. After all these years, the Chili Peppers are still friends. They still hang out, have dinners and game nights.

Next, discussions about creators of a different kind at System One. Mark Ritson, Orlando Bloom, Jon Evans and Andrew Tindall take the stage. 

Sorry folks, the data shows that 90% of the creators everyone’s throwing money at are rubbish. And most of that spend isn’t being measured for ROI. Nor do marketers really know how to measure it. 

“Your main job as a marketer is to make sure your brand comes to mind – because it doesn’t and the consumer doesn’t care.” – Mark Ritson.

“For good marketers to win, we need bad marketers to lose. It’s a zero-sum game.” – Mark Ritson.

“A brand is a living memory. Coherence is more powerful than consistency. Consistency is showing the glass from the same angle every time. Coherence is when you show the glass from different angles but the experience of it is the same each time.” – Orlando Wood.