With Cannes Lions 2014 celebrating creativity in the digital media industries, Exact Target from Salesforce looks back at some of the key trends to come out of the festival.
Throughout the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud provided the top social trends from the event, including everything from the Game of Thrones to “La Galerie d’Instragram” photography competition, as seen in this recap.

Opening Weekend

The opening weekend at Cannes introduced us to #dronie (Drone + selfie) and the power of David Hasselhoff. Follow along throughout Cannes for Daily Updates from the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud.

Monday

Cannes Lions really kicked-off on Monday, generating over 25,300 online conversations – over 3,300 more than the entire weekend period. This puts online conversations averages at over 1,100 per hour. Activity peaked at around 3pm local time as film director Spike Jonze took to the stage alongside SapientNitro to talk about the crossover between technology and storytelling – reaffirming established themes from this year’s festival around the power of celebrity and the interest in storytelling.

Tuesday

Cannes Lions 2014 conversations continued to rise as Tuesday saw a further 26,000 mentions around the festival – the highest number yet. This was in no small part down to the presence of superstar Kanye West, whose 3,500+ mentions saw him rise to easily become the most mentioned celebrity of the entire festival, overtaking Patrick Stewart’s 1,300 mentions on Sunday.
Kanye took to the stage to discuss a whole host of topics, including the role that technology plays in cultural evolution, highlighting the likes of Instagram, Apple and Beats. Aside from Mr. West, Tuesday saw Marissa Mayer spark a conversation around creativity in digital advertising that propelled the buzz word to over 1,600 mentions. Storytelling, which has been a major Cannes Lions theme so far, actually dropped in the ratings yesterday with 626 mentions. However, its draw and relevance was still made apparent through the ‘Storytelling with Story creators’ panel, which generated the biggest buzz word peak of the day with 204 mentions, with TV producer Rebecca Eaton driving the conversation.
Meanwhile, Google made a significant play in the brand stakes as activity at its Creative Sandbox really took off, helping the tech giant to hit over 1,055 mentions. First off, its Chief Business Officer, Nikesh Arora, spoke of how technology can help to achieve the ‘impossible’, while later sessions with TED and Lego sparked further discussion around creativity and how to inspire an audience with a universally appealing advertising campaign.
Key findings from Tuesday are:
• Cannes Lions conversations rose again on Tuesday, generating over 27,500 mentions online (a 9% increase on Monday)
• Kanye West was the main reason for this – his presence generated over 3,500 mentions, even sparking its own #Cannes-Ye hashtag
• While Ogilvy continued to dominate in the brand stakes, Tuesday saw Google make a play and achieve over 1,000 mentions. This was due in part to increased activity at its Creative Sandbox, where brands including Lego and TED took part in sessions exploring creativity and the ingredients behind a universally appealing ad
• ‘Creativity’ continued to dominate the most used buzz words with over 1,600 uses. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer presented on the importance of creativity within digital and mobile advertising, helping to spark much discussion on the topic

Wednesday

Although Kanye West’s presence yesterday created the biggest social splash so far, it is arguable that Wednesday is the day that we really saw the true power of celebrity. A host of A-listers, from Jared Leto and Courtney Love, to Sheryl Sandberg and Calvin Harris, helped to drive overall Cannes Lions 2014 conversations to a record 29,743 – a rise of almost 15% that comfortably surpassed Tuesday, despite Kanye’s appearance.
Sandberg discussed the power of personalised advertising, and plans for Facebook and Instagram, which helped drive mentions around the social platforms to 1,007 and 1,338 respectively. Meanwhile, Calvin Harris’s Tweet that he was on his way to Microsoft’s Beach Club almost doubled the popularity of #msftcannes, moving it into fourth place in the most popular hashtags stakes, helping to boost the brand’s social presence.
Celebs also drove online conversations around buzz words yesterday. Both Sandberg and Leto discussed advertising in depth, with the latter relating it to its role within the music industry and how technology can impact upon it. These presentations sparked a significant surge in online conversations around ‘advertising’, with the word experiencing a 128% increase from Tuesday to over 1,500 mentions. Other hot topics of discussion on Wednesday focused around the role of women in creative industries, as well as the Design Lions awards.

Thursday

Thursday saw awards become a major talking point for the first time – being mentioned over 1,000 times online. Chipotle took advantage of this as it won the Cannes PR Award for its anti-Big-Food ad, promoting sustainable food. The restaurant exploited this success effectively on social media, generating over 500 online conversations around the brand which helped to promote it’s the positive news further. The other major talking point in terms of awards was that of the Future Lions. The #brightfuture hashtag rose to become the fifth most popular as buzz increased around the creativity and advertising stars of the future.
On stage, Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed delivered a presentation exploring the changing nature of marketing that resonated with the online audience, enabling the brand to create significant noise via social channels. Weed spoke about the importance of finding creative talent, as well as the increasing threat of the fragmented customer experience. The insight shared clearly struck a chord with the creative audience, as Unilever became the first brand to generate this level of conversation without a celebrity presenting alongside them.
While celebrities didn’t quite have the same on stage presence as Wednesday, Kim Kardashian’s attendance at the MailOnline’s boat party not only saw her rise to second place on the social charts, but also prove great value to the UK news outlet as it closed in on 1,000 mentions. Jared Leto also continued to top the charts in the celebrity stakes after tweeting a photo of himself with a monk. Despite the lack of a celebrity keynote on Thursday, the influence A-listers hold on conversation was proven through their continued, significant contribution. Celebrities were featured in 25% of all Cannes Lions related chatter on Thursday.

Friday and Saturday

Friday and Saturday saw industry big-hitters become as prevalent in the online conversation stakes as their celebrity counterparts. While Bono took the crown following a discussion around RED, the likes of Apple designer Jon Ive and WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell sparked significant buzz online as they shared their expertise on all things advertising and design. Only Bono’s 2,328 mentions could stop Jon Ive from reaching the top spot after featuring in 1,200 conversations.
A debate between Sorrell, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo, and Viacom’s Phillipe Dauman was the major cause for this rise of the industry experts. The three talked about everything from Twitter’s e-commerce plans, to the future of mobile advertising and the growing trend of more data-driven ‘programmatic’ approaches. This resulted in over 2,100 mentions combined for the three brands as the social sphere sought to discuss the experts’ insights.
Bono’s presence was also boosted as he was awarded the first everCannes Lionheart Award. The power of celebrity has been omnipresent all week during Cannes Lions as the likes of Kanye West and Sir Patrick Stewart helped to drive conversations, but Bono’s award sought to recognise the value that a celebrity can have in building a humanitarian brand or campaign that can “achieve greater good for humankind”. Bono founded RED in 2006 in an attempt to get both businesses and consumers to unite in the fight against AIDS, and was on stage to raise awareness further. RED was also the second most mentioned brand during the closing days of Cannes Lions 2014, gaining 1,169 mentions and only being trumped by Ogilvy, which rounded off the week on a high with over 5,000 mentions, owing to its continually well-executed social strategy and mass pick-up of the #OgilvyCannes hashtag.

Source: http://www.exacttarget.com/