• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, June 16, 2014

Will you return from Cannes with the same job you had when you left? It's not a secret that Cannes Lions is a hotbed of recruitment with awesome talent from all over the world all in one place at the same time. What better time for one agency to poach talent from another? Mike Shields explores this in a Wall Street Journal column, writing: "Cannes is a hotbed of recruiting activity, so much so that agency talent managers and headhunters mark the week on their calendars, strategically plot out their days to ensure they meet with the best potential job candidates, sometimes planning their activities months in advance. Top agencies usually treat a trip to Cannes as a way to reward their top creatives. But they do so knowing there’s an inherent danger: some of them might not come back." Will you come back?

While recruiting in Cannes may be one of the most effective ways to find great talent, not every agency goes to Cannes. Take small Philadelphia digital shop Brolik. The ten-person agency recently experienced a growth spurt and needed to hire three people. Rather than spending money with recruiters, the agency decided to launch a social media recruitment campaign. They used Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Using Facebook's targeting, Twitter's @username targeting and LinkedIn's job posting platform, the agency netted 1,500 visits to its careers page and 88 qualified resumes. The spend was $1,093.19 making for a cost per application figure of $12.42. Give it a try!

If you're in Cannes (or even if you're not, be sure to check out Dronie. Yes, Dronie. It's an amalgam of drone and selfie created by Twitter to capture Cannes like we've never seen before. The social network is in Cannes with an actual drone that's flying overhead capturing whatever it can. It started by capturing Patrick Stewart on Sunday outside the Palais. It then swooped in on others up and down La Croisette. The flights are represented in Vines that show the drone rapidly zooming out and away from its subjects. We're hoping there's a spotlighted night dive over the Gutter Bar around 3 a.m. some night. Now that would be interesting!

So who won big in Cannes last night? OgilvyOne took home a Direct Grand Prix for a British Airways "Magic" billboard campaign that showed kids pointing to planes in the air. McCann Melbourne won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix for "Guilt Trips," a campaign designed to get young urban dwellers to go visit their parents in the country. CAA won two Gold PR Lions and the Grand Prix for its industrial food production work as represented in The Scarecrow. London's adam&eveDDB took home the Promo & Activation Grand Prix for its work on the Harvey Nichols "Sorry, I Spent It on Myself" campaign.

Over in Australia, things became dicey between Innocean's Managing Director Mike Morrison and Korean management of Hyundai and Kia. Morrison has left the agency and has filed a lawsuit saying: “There’s a very big cultural gap between the Australian management group and the Korean CEO and the degree of change needed to be able to bring Innocean up to speed so existing clients are satisfied. Clients are agitating for that change and Innocean needs to act quicker.” Morrison, who joined Innocean a year ago, was brought in to revamp the agency which he did with key creative, data and digital hires from the likes of Droga5 and Wieden + Kennedy. Alas, it seems his revamp was a bit much for the Koreans.

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