• by Larissa Faw , Staff Writer, June 21, 2016

CANNES, FRANCE -- Actor Will Smith has experienced success across multiple forms of media: TV, music, and movies. Yet it was his daughter that provided one of his biggest lessons in his career. 

During a conversation with Edelman's Jackie Cooper at the Cannes Lions, Smith offered advice that has relevance for advertisers seeking to connect with consumers worldwide. "My power is being able to sell a product globally," says Smith. "I need to be in tune with their needs, not try to trick them into seeing “Wild Wild West." 

Smith is frank about his early desire to be the biggest movie star in the world. He was obsessed with winning rather than artistry. Then, during a brief lag in his career "around the time that he made “Wild Wild West,” he jokes, his kids were thriving with their careers. His son Jaden starred in Karate Kid and his daughter Willow was on tour with Justin Bieber promoting her album. "I call it the year of mutiny. My family decided they were no longer functioning under my winning tyranny." 

In Dublin, his daughter said she was done with her tour. She had her fun and wanted to go home. Smith, however, said she needed to finish her commitment and enjoyed being a parent to a famous daughter. He was caught up in his concept of what it means to be a successful parent. Then, during the next tour stop in London, she came downstairs completely bald. "She shaved her head when her hit record was [called] whip my hair," says Smith. They quit the tour and went home.  

"It was an explosive moment in my mind," he says. “Selling, marketing and creating cannot be about me. There wasn't a sales pitch I could sell her because she didn't want it. You got to spend the majority of the time understanding the other person," he says. 

Smith cautions against building something if people don't want it since, "you aren't going to be able to sell it.” This revelation led to his shift from focusing his goals from product to people. He isn't making movies solely based on what he wants. People purchase around values. They connect with human and emotional needs.  

Fantastic storytellers define universally relatable emotions. Smith is selling across a global platform so he must adjust his frame of mind to succeed across multiple cultures. This means physical comedy works better than verbal comedy. Above all, global products and content aren't going to necessarily translate unless they are rooted in connections. "It's the power of the story," he says. You can't begin a story merely by saying  that a dude came into a room and nobody liked him, he points out. And trying to reverse engineer around a theme is very difficult, he cautions. He uses the film “Pursuit of Happyness” as one example of how the plot resonated globally because it was about a dad living on the street with his son. Everyone can relate to that, he says. 

At one point Smith joked that he has never done a celebrity endorsement and after saying he would never do so, he reversed his opinion after realizing he was sitting in front of thousands of advertisers. "This is the wrong room to say that. I am open."