At the Cannes Lions "festival
of creativity" (advertising, and marketing) in France this week,
Facebook and Twitter are jousting for the spotlight. With festival
attendance at an all-time high, up from 9,000 delegates in 2011 to
almost 11,000 this year, the exposure to marketers and creatives makes
it well worth elbowing the rosé-imbibing crowds on the Croisette.
Twitter, which has been promoting the #CannesLions hashtag on a special page, hoisted its newly spiffed up
blue bird logo at the entrance to the Palais de Festivals welcoming
attendees and none too subtly reminding them to keep tweeting.
Cofounder Jack Dorsey, at Cannes for the first time, tweeted
the photo at top. He will receive the Cannes Lions “media person of the
year” award (previously bestowed on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg,
Google's Eric Schmidt and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer), while Twitter CEO
Dick Costolo is set to give the keynote on Wednesday.
Twitter's advertising blog reported from
Cannes on Monday that “According to Buzz Radar, which is powering the
festival’s Social Command Center, Tweet volume related to Cannes Lions
through the first day of the event has already surpassed total social
media mentions during last year's festival. There have been over 15,000
online posts across social media referencing #CannesLions as of Monday
afternoon, with 95% coming from Twitter, and most delegates are still
just arriving.”
Facebook, meanwhile, is convening its second creative council with
chief creative officers from agencies around the world (such as Amir
Kassaei, worldwide chief creative officer of DDB) to talk about
improving advertising opportunities on the site — one of FB's biggest challenges.
Still reeling from GM’s pulling of paid ads
just before its IPO — even though CMO Joel Ewanick was part of last
year’s inaugural Facebook creative council — Facebook's Cannes
delegation, led by ad sales head Carolyn Everson, are hoping to woo
advertisers with better designed pages, ads and apps.
"If the work is better, the investment that amplifies those ideas is going to be better," commented Mark D’Arcy, Director of Global Creative Solutions, to Ad Age.
He's in Cannes along with Everson plus colleagues Blake Chandlee,
VP-global agencies and accounts and Brad Smallwood, head of measurement.
"There's nobody who says they don't do Facebook," D'Arcy added.
Facebook is re-launching its Facebook Studio agency tool with help
from Omnicom's EVB digital agency, which includes online courses about
advertising and hot topics such as measuring ROI.
Coca-Cola’s CMO Joe Tripodi gave Facebook a big boost at Cannes by
saying that Facebook ads do drive sales. "If we can get 40-million plus
fans, or even some subset of them talking positively about the things
we're doing, ultimately that's a good thing for us," he told the Wall Street Journal. "I think it's probably a leading indicator of potential sales."
Twitter is hoping its investment in the festival will help ease its
imminent international expansion into Europe and Latin America, to be
headed by Shailesh Rao, Google’s former head of display advertising in
Asia. “What I like about the way Twitter has approached things in
general is we have erred on the side of caution,” said Rao to the Financial Times, adding that its ads “keep the user in mind always."
With offices in London, Tokyo and Dublin — and plans to set up
offices in Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Brazil
— Twitter aims to augment its ad platform so that multinational brands
can manage conversations and campaigns from one global account. “Unlike a
traditional social network that’s about family and friends, from the
very beginning Twitter was about interests and information,” said Tony
Wang, Twitter's UK GM, to FT.
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