It's getting googly here in Cannes

In Cannes in the south of France, there are new protagonists who cannot be overlooked due to their presence. While the advertising festival was originally firmly in the hands of film productions and advertising agencies, who celebrated lavish parties on the Croisette, today the flags of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are flying. The internet companies not only own the festival grounds. They have also taken control of the fashionable beach sections. Where advertising agencies used to host their parties, the American super web companies have now set up camp. With their own creative departments such as "Creative Labs" (Google) or "Creative Solutions" (Microsoft), they are increasingly pushing their way into advertising agency territory. The top dog here in Cannes is clearly Google. The search engine company has set up a small tent city called "Sandbox" in the most prominent location. The range on offer dwarfs pretty much everything else on the Croisette. The place is virtually predestined for networking. With live concerts, super-fast Wi-Fi, a relaxed beach atmosphere, free drinks, comfortable sofas and showrooms, Google manages to attract festival participants in large numbers.

However, it must also be said that nowadays there is no way around Google when it comes to advertising. The company has invested a lot of money in recent years to buy advertising companies and know-how. Many advertising agencies are therefore looking to get close to the company. And Google turns the advertising world upside down practically every month. At the beginning of June, just in time for the advertising festival, Google integrated the mobile advertising platform Ad Mob into the Google universe. Two years ago, Google bought the company, which specializes in mobile advertising, for several hundred million dollars. Now several teams are vying for the favor of advertisers in Cannes. Anyone looking for a strong position is dependent on a partnership.

Mobile is the future

And that is important. Mobile is the medium of the future, according to the dozens of speakers here in Cannes. Festival participants are storming the halls and attending seminars such as "The only way to be creative, is to be mobile" or "Secrets of mobile superstars". It's obvious: the smartphone is revolutionizing consumption. The figures speak for themselves. There are now more mobile phones than televisions in the world. In some countries, there are even more subscriptions than people. Experts from the Mobile Marketing Association said in Cannes that a new generation of mobile devices will turn the entire advertising industry on its head. The offline and online worlds will become even more closely linked. It will soon be possible to photograph items of clothing in public and buy them online with just a few clicks. Of course, friends on social networks will also benefit. The rapidly increasing use of the mobile internet will undoubtedly present companies and brands with major challenges. Incidentally, the growth drivers are the markets in Japan and the USA. They are setting a pace that Europe cannot yet keep up with. According to forecasts by mobile advertising specialists and market researchers, Europe will have developed into a billion-dollar powerhouse in mobile advertising by 2015. However, Japan is already at this point today.

The mobile business is therefore the big future. This is why the Mobile category was created for the first time in Cannes. This year's shortlist features some truly exceptional works. The first Mobile Grand Prix in Cannes went to the USA. The "Project Re:Brief" for Coca-Cola, commissioned by Google, exemplifies all the possibilities of mobile advertising. Users were able to buy a Coke for someone anywhere in the world using their mobile device. For this purpose, the can vending machines were linked to the web. The creative concept for the campaign came from the agencies Grow Interactive and Johannes Leonardo. The reaction of the community here in Cannes: "Crazy". With the emergence of new channels, especially mobile ones, the "creativity and technology" debate is also being pushed forward. Countless panel discussions deal with this topic. The term "Creativology" was also created for this purpose. The appeal of individual agency heads is interesting. They are calling for a move away from traditional thinking. New management models are needed. For example, a head of creative and a head of technology should lead teams and develop campaigns together. One final observation on mobile: while the so-called QR code, a pixel square that links offline and online media via a cell phone camera, has only been used sporadically in advertising campaigns in recent years, it has now reached the masses. Many award-winning works here in Cannes work with the cell phone code. For a long time, advertisers found the QR code aesthetically unpleasant, but now the pixel thing seems to be developing iconic potential.

And what else stood out during the first few days in Cannes? As last year, Google seems to be the big winner. The company is one of the favorites in most categories. In the prestigious Media category, Google won the Grand Prix for "Voice Search". To promote the new service, Google launched an outdoor campaign in London that referred to surrounding houses, institutions, businesses or landmarks on every single billboard. How did they do it? With terms in spoken language that promoted Google Voice Search in an ideal way. The campaign was praised for its ability to cleverly combine technology, analysis and storytelling. Two-time Grand Prix winner American Express should also be mentioned, as this example shows that the big advertising agencies such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky are turning away from funny gimmicks and are now trying to solve companies' existential problems. Advertisers came up with the "Small Business Saturday" initiative for the credit card company American Express. The starting point was the realization by American Express that many small businesses suffer from low sales. So in 2010, American Express declared the last Saturday in November, one of the top shopping Saturdays in the USA, as Small Business Saturday for the first time. The aim of the campaign was to raise public awareness of the services and offerings of small regional businesses and stores. With resounding success: 1.5 million Facebook users supported the campaign. And more than 100,000 businesses declared themselves Small Business Day companies - with the result that they achieved an average of 29% more turnover on Small Business Saturday than usual.

A festival of records

Even if internet companies are spreading their wings in Cannes and upstaging the traditional advertisers, Cannes is setting new records. In terms of submissions this year, the agencies have gone all out, not all out. This year's record number of entries and participants is dizzying. 34,301 works were submitted. Last year the figure was 28,828, and in the crisis year of 2009 it was only 22,652. Queues form in front of the seminars and workshops. Waiting times of 30 minutes or more are the rule. The festival has long since ceased to belong to the agency people alone. According to the festival management, around 3,000 representatives from client circles are in Cannes, which led advertising icon Patrick Collister to make the tongue-in-cheek statement in an interview: "Leave us one fucking week alone." The advertising industry is not only doing well, it is booming. The number of entries from Switzerland also increased by 100 compared to the previous year. 503 works entered the race for the coveted Lions. Christian Lüscher