Believe it or not there is more to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity than late night beach parties, yachts and having drinks on the Carlton Terrace.
There are meetings. There are plenty of meetings, and everyone showing you the latest thing they have created and why it is better than the competition on the creative, media agency and media owner side.
By far my winner for the “look at what we have got” category was Google. It was not that they had anything new to show – in fact I had seen it all before but it was the way in which it was delivered that made it stand out from the crowd.
While it could have been tempting to trot out some execs to tell us how good Google is instead they decided to show us and they succeeded with the Google Creative Sandbox.
Google partnered with brand experience agency Flourish Creative to create an area at the Festival where not only could you take part in some early morning yoga or have a complimentary smoothie but you could play and engage with Google’s products and offerings.
Instead of telling us how great Google Voice Search is we were encouraged to play Chubby Bunny, the game where you have to cram as many giant marshmallows in your mouth as possible and see if Google Voice Search can still understand what you are saying. My partner in crime @creamglobal Mark St. Andrew got a record number of five in his mouth before he was incomprehensible!
If you wanted to know where all the cool kids in Cannes were the info was a QR code away, thanks to Google’s heat map which told you which places and parties were the hottest.
And the back to search, the photo (below) of me inserted into an iconic Benetton ad was still recognisable on Google Search as being a Benetton ad despite my beautiful face being in the middle.
Let’s not forget about Google’s latest offering, +1 – entry into the Sandbox was granted after you placed your +1 on a giant map, when I first visited the lounge I was proudly the only person with a +1 in Beijing.
It can be hard to achieve standout in Cannes in amongst the mass of delegates and vendors touting for business but in my opinion Google stood out from the pack by following my favourite acronym: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)!