Design thinking and the work of designers was discussed as emerging into prominence in the advertising world, aided by tools like the internet that helped spread design's influence. Brands need to engage consumers through their passions and interests by focusing on high-quality content over branded messages. Mobile technology is changing storytelling into more of a dialogue through omni-channel experiences. The gaming industry was presented as a model for understanding consumer behavior in real-time through what was termed "divine data."

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Design thinking
Storytelling may be dominating the conversation this year, but
next year, but next year could see design thinking emerge into
the Cannes sunlight. Fuseproject founder, Chief Creative Officer
of Jawbone and general genius Yves Béhar gave it a little nudge
this morning at Adobe’s session on the new creatives. Designers
are trained to identify those problems that can be solved with a
new perspective, and their moment is coming. This wasn’t always
as obvious as it is today. Steve Jobs gets oodles of credit for
awakening a design sensibility simultaneously in the consumer
and in the business world, and Béhar joins Jobs’ influence to the
invention of great design tools and the internet. That trifecta gave us
today’s perspective on design: design as a core business function.
Design thinking, beautifully evoked by the work of the late Bill
Drentel, has attracted the attention of business scholars, and it is
starting to captivate us. Stories are the core of our business, but,
as Béhar put it this morning: “design brings storytelling to life.”
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brand
thinkingAfter the gossamer insights of yesterday, Cannes came at us with
some hard brand thinking. Google teamed up with TNS and Ogilvy
(pardon the self promotion) to showcase some new research that
showed us how important purpose is to a brand’s consumers. It
seems self-evident, but we don’t seem to get it yet. We need to
engage consumers on their passions and interests. Your consumer
doesn’t see a line between content and branded content—at least
online. If they’ve clicked over to you through social, then it’s likely
they didn’t even register the brand—commercial or editorial—
that produced the content they just opened. The content is what
matters. So does that mean it’s ok to rickroll your consumer? We
know the answer, and yet we still think in terms of what we want to
tell our “targets” instead of what our “audience” is asking us to say.
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Mobilethinking“The important thing about mobile is that it’s not just
a new piece of tech,” says Sony’s Matt Beavis. “It’s a
platform of communication.” This is not a searing insight.
Neither is this: “If audiences are thinking mobile first,
we should too.” But the implications are rather more
interesting. It changes the way you tell stories. In an
omni-channel world, storytelling is “less broadcasting
and more of a dialogue,” according to John Costello,
the President of Global Marketing and Innovation for
Dunkin’ Brands. They pitch a mobile-first strategy as a
way of addressing today’s consumer needs. And when
it’s time to make the mobile donuts, they delivered:
Dunkin’ is the first brand to produce a Vinevertisment.
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forward
thinkingOk, get your face out of your phone and look around for
some real-world inspiration. What’s the first place you think
of when you hear “inspiration”? Why, Vegas, of course. The
euphemistically-named “gaming industry” has for decades
been a (profitable) working lab of human behavior. Ash
Bendelow, Managing Director of Brave, thinks we should
look to that dessert oasis for cues on how brands can
better satisfy consumers. He calls it “divine data” and says,
rather opaquely, that we should pay attention to “divine
data, not big data, because it reports, analyses, and creates
an actionable delivery in real-time, converging the digital
world with the physical world.” And what of the aether?
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forward thinking
cont.Maybe this: reframing the problem of climate change from a
global bother to a worldwide opportunity to make a better world.
No Thinking—And then the air was filled with stupid things.
One would think one could rely on fading celebrities for
shitty movies and good copy. Today only one of those
things came true. Sarah Jessica Parker came to Cannes
with Cosmopolitan Editor in Chief Joanna Coles, and no one
learned anything. Spike Jonze is a well-loved writer/director
was here today, too, and while the bar for celebrity content
was fairly low today, he barely cleared it. We’ll remember him,
at least, for this: “Be willing to get fired for a good idea.”

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“Bewllingto get fired
foragoodidea.”Spike Jonze