Cannes International Advertising Festival: Day 4

Today was quite the day!

We started the day off bright and early, as the automotive commercials were being screened at 9am.  Since I'm a bit of an automotive buff, I made sure we made it there as soon as they started.  I found the advertisements were really interesting, I think that automotive ads have the most variations based on manufacturers than in most markets.  It's very interesting, not only are there major differences in the advertisements based on where they were produced and broadcast from, but also in the manufacturers themselves, and what segment of the market they're attempting to attract.

I think the most interesting ad campaign, as far as high-end auto manufacturers go, would have to be Lancia.  The Lancia campaign, which aired throughout Europe, featured very dark tones, extremely contrasted images, and very surreal and dark themes, something not very common in automotive advertisements, especially in America.  Here is the YouTube link to an example of one of the commericials. 

I also found one of the Honda ads from Europe very interesting.  Normally, Honda commercials are associated with discussing the features versus the price of Hondas, converying more about economy and benefits rather than excellence in quality.  This commercial, however, was driven purely on the quality, and almost looked like a Lexus, or Mercedes-Benz commercial.  I thought it was extremely well done, of the highest production quality, and really brought Honda up to a whole new level.  I've got the YouTube link for the Honda commercial as well. 

After the screenings, we went to a Content Showcase Workshop featuring Leap Music and Vodafone.  The workshop discussed music production and copyrighting music for using in advertisements.  Vodafone, with the help of Leap, has been using a whole new approach to licensing material for using in commercials.  Vodafone now purchases the copyrights to the music directly from composers and producers, in order to ensure full usage of the material.  This way, they can keep the material as an asset, and are able to then distribute it as the need, making it much more flexible, and easier to recycle the material when they want. 

Matthew Gillard, of Marketing Operations and Evaluations, discussed all the pros of this new method.  What was very interesting about the workshop was that there were several people in the audience that were involved in the music business, whether as producers or in advertising.  They all had very interesting takes on this method of acquiring licensing, all with fresh ideas and thinking it was a progressive and impressive maneuver. 

After this workshop, we went to two seminars, one from USA Today and one from Ad Age and Nike Plus, I'll let Jess and Mike discuss those ones for you!  Well, that's all for now, we'll be posting again soon!

Au-Revoir for now,

Todd