Is It Worth Going to Cannes? EP31

Episode 31 Transcript

Meet my friend. Thank you so much for intro. Can you not hear me? I'm sorry. Welcome to the Marketing Combat. Let's do this. Welcome to the Marketing Combat podcast.

My name is Jason Donnelly and today we have an exciting topic. So I want to go straight into it and introduce my cohost, my friend, my boss, my partner in crime. I don't know what you want to call him, but his name is Chris Kubbernus.

What's up everybody. My name is Chris Kubbernus and welcome to the marketing combat podcast. If you're new here, this is how it works. Basically we battle it out for your marketing pleasure about a certain topic within the industry. Some are hot topics, some are what they call green content topics, right? So like

is social media worth paying for? And is this app any good or blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So one of us gets to choose what side they're on and the other person has to battle for the other side. So they have to play devil's advocate. Today we're actually talking about CAN, the creative festival, the advertising festival in the Southeast of France on the Mediterranean. Been a festival going on for many, many years. If you're in the advertising industry, you probably have heard of it. It is a festival plus an award show. And it was last week I was there and today's topic is

is can worth going to. And I'm gonna take the position that it is worth going to, and I'm gonna argue for it, and Jason's gonna argue for why it is not worth going to, it is a waste of your time. So.

I'm going to go first because that's how we roll in the podcast. And I'm going to say that Canada is definitely worth going to for a couple of different reasons. Mainly, if you do it the right way, if you maybe ignore spending the big ticket prices on the actual festival, there is a ton of offshoot talks and meetings and events that are not part of the, well, they are part of the festival, but they're not paying the high price to go sit in the amphitheater and sit and do the workshops and hear Kevin Hart speak and you know.

Ryan Reynolds speak. And if you don't want to do those things and you don't want to go to the award show, if you do all the offshoots stuff, then you don't have to pay for the ticket. can go to the free event and you're just paying for basically a room and board while you're at can. And those talks are great. mean, there's a lot of insight there. There's a lot of people trying to learn. There's a lot of networking opportunities. If you do it right, I am horrible at networking. I'm still working on this. I am way more comfortable being a speaker on stage and people coming and talking to me afterwards. I realize this.

that I'm not very comfortable just walking around an event and be like, hey, what do you do? What do you do? Which is weird, right? Because anybody who knows me, they know I'm a pretty friendly guy, but I have issues with that, so I'm working on that. And those events, they've taught me a lot. I learned a lot. You get to take a temperature on the industry. You get to hear what people are.

struggling with. also, there's a little bit of politicking, meaning like I was at the Meta Beach quite a bit. Meta obviously pushing their own products, their own services, where are they going, know, why they're the best advertising platform out there. So there's a little bit of promotional promote sort of stuff going on. But if you can wade through that, then you can get to the good stuff and really learn a lot. And I learned a lot about,

where I think I've been making some mistakes in our own marketing and in our own business model. That was interesting. And in my own way of handling some things that I've done over the last couple of years. So that was actually like kind of some epiphanies. And I don't know if I want to get into them on the podcast here, but I had two really big epiphanies that made.

worth the ticket price, at least for me, that made me see some things in some new light and I'm excited to work on that, right? So it gave me some new energy, gave me some new insights, new ways of working, new ways of thinking. And so I'm super stoked to get started on that. So that's why I think Cannes is worth it. Plus I'll just add this.

element to it. If you want to be in an industry, you got to wrap your hands around that industry and you got to like, you got to get in there. You got to be in the game. If I was into coffee, like I love coffee, but I'm not a coffee maker. But if I was a coffee maker and Juan Valdez was having his international Juan Valdez conference in Columbia, I would have to be there. I would need to be there because this is my industry and I want to embrace it and be a part of it and be a part of that culture. And that's why I would say like, you know, just like Ken is a

the festival of creativity for the advertising world. You gotta go, you gotta be a part of it, you gotta soak it all in. That's my last say, I know I'm over time. Sorry about that, Jason. Hit me, why is CANNES not worth it? I wanna hear this, cause I think you're probably right. Chris, I'm gonna tell ya. I think that I'm so excited. I can't wait to hear your epiphanies, cause I wanna use them and hear them and see what we can do with them. I don't know if you wanna use them. I'll use them. If they're epiphanies, they're worth it. But here, no, I don't think CAN's worth it. I think that you can get everything that you get out of CAN right from home, networking.

going online, learning. It's all about learning and being a part of the industry. Be a part of the industry from wherever you are without spending thousands upon thousands of dollars, especially for young creatives that are just going to party. The whole thing can is, or it used to be at least, this big party where everybody just goes and has a great time for a week. But at this point, it just feels like it's a bunch of high -end marketing guys. How do I say this appropriately that's not circled?

It's just a bunch of people who have been in the industry and are making ads and hoping that people will tap each other on the back to me. And I hear you and I'm glad that you had epiphanies, but at the end of the day, many of us don't have plane tickets to go to the south of France to hang out on yachts and just to be seen at Cannes. But that being said, this is coming from someone who's never been there.

Well, yeah, yeah, but that's, mean, listen, everything that I've read. totally get where you're at. Yeah, everything you're at. I get where you're coming from totally, and I think it's a good, healthy mindset to go in and say like, okay, what if...

what of this is a circle, like you said, and what of this is actual value. And I think there's that. And I think there's that anywhere you go when it comes to an award ceremony. There's any time you attach any kind of industry awards, industry nights, sort of stuff, there is a lot of people clapping each other on the back, know, congratulating each other for a work that, you know, maybe, and in the background, they're all hating each other because they're like, you know, how did you get that client and why can't I win that award? And I think that there's a

a fair bit of two -facedness. There's a fair bit of backstabbing. There's a fair bit of jealousy. There's a fair bit of, yeah, a lot of that negative stuff, right? you have to... feels... You have to wait through the... It feels like it would just be ego upon ego upon ego upon ego, and I'm not... I don't want to be a part of it. Absolutely, and it's like, who's got the best party? Who's got the...

best yacht. Is Kevin Hart at your party? Is Ryan Reynolds there? I can't wait. Yeah, there is a little bit of that. I, I do know also I didn't get on a yacht, so I had no yacht experience. but we did joke that, we want to like, if Cubco could do it, we'd have the shittiest yacht. We'd call it the shat. And, if you wanted to be on the shat, get your shat on the shat. would do, we would try to do that. But you know, that there is a, there's a lot of like, Hey, look at me and look at us.

That's a shabby party. That's a shabby party. I mean, it would be the best party, but it'd be the shattiest party as well. But see, right there, we're already in a competition. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So it is competitive. You know, I think one of the epiphanies I'll leave, I'll leave you guys with this in the debate here and you guys can chime in afterwards and let us know what your thoughts are on Kent. But I will say that it's only the big network agencies that can afford, obviously, like the yacht and the parties and the stuff like that. But other than that, it's all technology.

It's all Facebook's and this ad platform and this consultancy group.

to medium -sized advertising agencies, because clearly they're not the ones that are able to make big moves, right? And obviously, right? So it's an interesting sort of epiphany that I had on that as well. I'm not including that in the two, but I do think it's interesting to see that the technology, the publishers, the platforms, the consultancies, there's the one that can splash cash, and the lowly creative agencies that win their can lions are not the ones that can afford it. It's quite interesting. I'll leave you guys with that. Thank you for tuning in.

drop us a like, drop us a mention. We would love to hear from you. Let us know what your experience was. Was it worth it for you? Was it not? Will you be coming next year? And will you be joining us on our Shiat? I'm gonna be on the Shiat. Yeah, we're all gonna be. And we're gonna have William Shiat near there. And hopefully he makes it till then. All right, thanks for tuning in, guys. Like, subscribe, notify, hit the notification bell. All the things that you can do. Just hit all the buttons and we'll see you guys in the next one. See you next time.