#CannesLions 2014: Day 4 Recap #OgilvyCannes

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hump day
The midpoint of Cannes has arrived, and the fatigue is starting
to set in. An excess of partying and working has caromed into
the effects of sleep deprivation and drink, resulting in some
hollow-eyed stares reflected back to you on the walk to the
Palais. There’s a little inspiration fatigue going on. Many people
will start consciously uncoupling from anything but the marquee
sessions at the Grand Audi (and unconsciously coupling after
the drinking begins). It’s a pity since the base just dropped. The
celebrity sessions have improved dramatically. Jared Leto, who
does even more things than James Franco, said the best thing
of the week so far: “The bridge between reality and a dream
is work.” Well, maybe that’s a close second to Ben Horowitz’s
quotation of Marc Andreessen: “The difference between a vision
and a hallucination is that other people can see the vision.”
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3. Recap day
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4once upon a time
Storytelling, the gift that sits at the base of all we do, has
become the new “um.” Session designers stick it in the title
when they can’t think of what else to say. And that’s a shame,
because today was the day of the storytellers—the real ones.
Gareth Neame, the genius behind Spooks and Downton Abbey,
joined The Walking Dead producer and Terminator writer Gale
Anne Hurd, and Whovian Steven Moffat for a master class on
storytelling. The panel’s moderator sought in vain to reverse-
engineer a formula for storytelling success. Moffat was having
none of that: “I’m always amused when critics call something
a ‘surprise hit.’ What other kind is there?” Well, the ones that
prefigure the future. Hurd, our dystopian artist-in-residence,
gave us her personal recipe for success: be a terrible athlete,
embrace your nerdiness, dive into your passion, and manifest
your vision. Oh, and by the way, Hurd was in the Pentagon a
couple of weeks ago: “Skynet is real.” Pause. “And it’s sentient.”
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charmers
Ralph Fines, Courtney Love, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Jared
Leto tag-teamed to tune up the audience with a series of
enjoyable, quotable sessions., which was a nice change
from the previous days. Courtney Love: “When you’re young,
the gods are really listening.” Ralph Fines: “The idea is the
most explosive thing we can have.” Eddie Moretti: “Vice
is hardly revolutionary - just good quality documentary
news coverage, but delivered in a peer-to-peer fashion,
by people who are from our audience. Not by someone
with a toupee.” Jeffrey Katzenberg: “The television market
is not a zero-sum game.” And the enviable Jared Leto:
“When advertising is great, it’s transcendent. It’s art.”
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a friend to all women
Sheryl Sandberg captivated the audience in a talk so
polished and wise, that for an hour, at least, everyone
stopped resenting her success. We embed our sexism in
how we view successful women and successful men. Are
the women resented and the men envied? As Sandberg
put it, “If more women are in leadership roles, we’ll stop
assuming they shouldn’t be.” Substitute “creative” for
“leadership” in that sentence, and you have the problem
with our industry. Sandberg reminded us that only 3% of
creative directors are women. That’s even lower than the
standard-bearer industry for inequity: computer science.
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