We all know there's obvious hypocrisy surrounding the annual Cannes Lions International “Festival of Creativity”: the insane costs, the scam award winners, the throwback hedonism at a time
of agency cutbacks. But trying to savage it is about as effective as complaining that Kim Kardashian has no actual talent.
No one cares — ‘cause she sure is pretty and
rich.
Indeed, the sketchy ethics of feeding the beast seem to fly out a window when you’re sipping a rosé on the balcony of the Carlton Hotel at sunset.
The business is so tough — and here’s the reward. Honestly, who would turn down an all-expenses-paid trip to the south of France in late June? (I wouldn’t, although I didn’t go
this year.)
Over the past decade, the increasingly tech-and-media-fied conference has also become celebrified, so it’s more like the other Cannes festival. Adrian Grenier,
Marilyn Manson, and Sting were among the boldfaced names there this year, invited by ad and media agencies and tech companies for their auras. (Selfies with said stars also accounted for hundreds of
annoying Facebook updates, with humble-braggy headlines like “So this happened.” )
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Which brings us back to Kim K., the celeb known for her hard work (and sex tape) and her many
sisters, who, along with momager Kris, have leveraged their focus on a properly kajazzled ka-jay-jay (and other female-type knowingness) to help them amass kabillions of dollars.
Kim,
the biggest star of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” spoke at the festival this year, to tremendous fanfare. (Well, more like abject worship.) The standing-room-only seminar was
sponsored by Glu Mobile, the makers of the “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood” mobile app (28 million downloads and counting), The game is all about buying the right stuff (hair, makeup, clothing,
accessories) and assembling the right glam team to conquer the red carpet. (Actually, the biggest story to come out of this year’s festival involved a much-retweeted photo of a couple making it -- to full-on intercourse -- on the red carpet in front
of the Palais at 4 a.m. But I digress.)
The mobile mogul, clad in a Balmain gold-and-black-striped pantsuit, and leveraging three stories of cleavage above her tank top, sat on stage next to a
Glu guy, who bobbed his head extra-vigorously every time she came up with a competent sentence.
The adulatory audience seemed equally overjoyed and relieved.
But first, Mrs. Kardashian
West was asked: “What is the one essential value for building a successful brand?” Kim’s reply: “Authenticity.”
So really, the conversation can’t even be
satirized. The woman who is famous for being an aficionado of elaborate sex and dress-up rituals and her platinum curatorial sense over selfie selection was able to strip down the essential
truth about marketing. I hear that next week she is speaking in San Francisco about “the objectification of women in media.” I am not making this up. You can’t make this
up.
In truth, I am as guilty as anyone for lamely borrowing Kardashian interest. Because what I really wanted to discuss was the Glass Lion, a new award introduced this year to the festival to
reward work that shatters gender bias and prejudice in ads, sponsored in part by Sheryl Sandberg’s “See It, Be It” program. Chaired by Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of
IfWeRanTheWorld/MakeLoveNotPorn and former president of BBH US, the Glass Lion jury included eight women and two men: the reverse of the usual gender proportion.
In fact, the Lions organizers
also improved the ratio of the rest of the juries and raised the number of women overall to more than 30%, a victory from the previously abysmal single digits.
Leo Burnett’s "#Likeagirl," a joint entry from the agency’s
London, Toronto and Chicago offices for P& G’s Always Brand, won a Glass Lion, and deservedly so. It’s an intoxicating documentary starring tween girls that urges viewers to
redefine the phrase "like a girl" as something strong and powerful. It’s won multiple awards at other shows this year as well.
FCB Inferno’s "This Girl Can" campaign for Sport England, encouraging women of every possible size and shape to
exercise, also picked up a Cannes Glass Lion. This spot seemed kind of standard to me in the suddenly crowded “you-go-girl” arena.
But the Glass Lion Grand Prix choice, “Touch the Pickle,” for Procter & Gamble’s Whisper
sanitary napkin brand, created by BBDO India Mumbai, is truly bold and old-wives'-tale-shattering. The 30-second spot exposed the misogynist legends surrounding menstruation, including the idea in
Indian culture that a woman having her period should not touch a pickle jar. The myth is that anything she touches while menstruating becomes impure, and she’d therefore spoil the gherkins.
And this is exactly what the Cannes Festival is good for: exposing us to the work of other cultures that we’d never otherwise see.
A Health & Wellness Grand Prix Lion was
introduced years ago, and one of this year’s winners was also created for the Procter & Gamble Always
brand, this time from Leo Burnett Mexico. An inspiration, it set out to change behavior in indigenous communities in rural Mexico, where the leading cause of death among women is cervical cancer.
Their lives are so circumscribed that women in these communities don’t even have the words in their vocabularies to talk about reproductive organs. The creative team distributed educational
materials that redefined words like “cervix” as “baby’s home door” to start the education and awareness process necessary among women and their daughters to get informed
and go for medical check-ups.
That’s quite a juxtaposition from Kim Kardashian. Culture, gender, all these constructs are full of contradictions and prejudices. Contrast not having a
word for cervix with the by-now-everyday American term “vajazzling.”
In the end, if the juries at Cannes can keep putting work like this on the world stage, to show us just how
crazy, indulged and post-cynical we’ve become, there’s hope. See you next year.