CANNES DAILY DIARY: Day 4 with Mariana O’Kelly

7:30. Brutally woken by my neighbour in this tiny, not-so-boutique hotel, slamming their door over and over. Grrrrr. I wanted the rest. I’ve been on a pitch the whole time I’ve been here, and with my team nine hours behind, the late nights have been the kind where you’re talking to a screen full of people who are only just eating lunch. Still grumpy for not getting to see Tiesto last night despite having 2 QR codes. They overbooked the event by 1 billion people. I swear. Bloody Yahoo.

9:30. Interview a potential new ECD. The restaurant is jam-packed, so I’m smug about the one open table. Voila! 5 min after our Croissants and Espressos arrive, I understand why the table was open. It sits under a nest of some kind. It rains worms on us. Not tiny ones, big fat wriggling ones. Merde!

11:30. I pop into a second-hand boutique on my way to the Palais. Two security doors to get in. Genius, really. Nothing convinces you a pair of slightly scuffed Prada is worth two thousand euros like having to be buzzed through twice to reach it.

12:30. Ahhhh. The cold aircon of the Palais. I grab a water, find a station, and start working through the Titanium shortlist. Suddenly I am in my happy place. All the Yahoo grumpiness and worm trauma fade away. Damn, the work is good. So simple and clear. I am reminded that the world’s most creative minds are here in this place. What a blessing to experience it IRL. I look over to the lady sitting opposite me, also happily lost in the work. I secretly wonder who she is and what work she wishes she’d done this year. I have a few on my list. Columbia ‘Expedition Impossible’, De’Longhi ‘Tiny Coffee Shops’, ‘The Last Coke in the Desert’, Viagra Blue Brands, Heineken ‘Tocayos Inc.’, The Apple TV rebrand.

2:00. French tomato salad for lunch. Divine.

3:30. Over to the Stagwell SportsBeach Wrap party. Rosé is flowing and LinkedIn QR codes are being shared around one last time. This is the real work before the work. Discovering the people that are way smarter than you could ever hope to be. The ones that will take your nugget and turn it into a jewel.

4:55. I run for the South African photo, which started at 5. I’m late. Sweat is running rivers down my front and my back. I arrive and everyone is already hugging, and nobody cares about the sweat. It’s so good to be near these people again, the ones I don’t get to stand next to the rest of the year. Man, what a country. What a group. We sing the anthem uit volle bors. Uit die blou van die Cannes hemele, uit die diepte van die Mediterranean sea. I swallow hard. I love these mense.

7:00. Dinner at La Petite Maison with my crew. Rib eye, truffle pasta, broccolini, and the thing everyone really came to do: compare what Cannes taught us this year. Mine is that brand matters more than ever. If you’re going to break it into a million pieces and send it out into the world, it had better hold. Agentic won’t just recommend the best product, it’ll recommend it based on who you are and what you believe. So your brand had better know exactly who it is, or the consumer’s digital twin won’t open the door when you knock. The truffle pasta arrives and I shut up, because nobody flew to the South of France to watch me do a keynote over pasta.

11:50. Good night, sleep tight, and thank you, Lord, for my room with aircon.