Spilling Cannes Secrets
I'm spending a week at Cannes Lions. Sign up for my daily recaps of industry insights (but more importantly, hot gossip).
Bonjour! I just arrived in Paris—2 p.m. local time, 8 a.m. body time.1 I’m hardly at my final destination for the weekend (I’ve still got about 11 hours to go until I can crawl into the hotel bed and pass out) and I’m plain exhausted already. While the Frenchie in the seat next to mine on the plane was totally pleasant, his breath smelled like hot baby diaper, and those Norse flight attendants knew no bounds. Very touchy.
Let’s get onto the meat of the matter.
My next few posts here will be daily recaps of what I’ve learned during Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which I’ll be attending Monday through Thursday. For those who don’t know, Cannes Lions is a big expo in Cannes where all the best advertising, comms, marketers, PR professionals, and large companies (i.e., Spotify, Reddit, Pinterest, WSJ. . .) come together to network (make new deals) and are joined by other cool people to draw in a more enthusiastic crowd. Some well-known and non-industry headliners this year include Jimmy Fallon,2 Serena Williams, Carmelo Anthony, Reese Witherspoon.
To be frank, I’m not really sure what to expect, since this is my first year going. I’m a little nervous, a little bit dreading the non-stop socialization with strangers (French strangers, no less!) and sleeping on an airbnb sofa for the majority of the week, but I’m mainly giddy about the whole spontaneous ado. I got sent a list of 1000+ events I could sign up for throughout the week, day and night. Who knew people had so much to talk about.
You might not care about brand and marketing and creatives, but you might find guilty pleasure in the retelling of celebrity dinners, or all the ways that the deadly combo of 100-degree-south-of-France heat plus bottomless liquor impacts the behavior of VIPs, or the possible live-stream of the Jason Derulo Sunset Concert I just got wind of via Gmail. And if you do care about brand and marketing and creatives, then I’ll have a special section detailing:
The hottest trends in the industry
Networking tips
Up-and-coming brands to follow
Marketing secrets and all the other crazy insights that might be revealed throughout the day when execs are drunk and happy
If you thought, yes! yes! MORE! to any of those examples above, then you might just be interested in following along.
You can also stay abreast of my Cannes journey on Instagram if I remember to actually post anything (self-promotion of this nature is so incredibly cringe and I wish I did not have to advocate for myself through such means, but alas, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!).
Stay tuned for my first Cannes tell-all coming Monday. In the meantime, I must go find a snack and head to my next airport gate.
Bises!
~ Toujours Chloé
I apologize for any grammar or spelling errors in this post. I’m running on two hours of sleep and one weak airport latte. I also refuse to have AI edit my work.
Unfortunately, my registration to the Jimmy Fallon Beach Talk was rejected.