Commentary

Stagwell Establishes (Sports) Beachhead At Upcoming Cannes Festival

For Adlanders it’s never too early to think about Cannes, land of rosé, yachts, insightful discussions about the business and of course, Lions.

The Cannes Festival of Creativity is in June but plans are already well underway for many companies including Stagwell which has just announced its first-ever beach presence at the Festival that it’s calling “Sport Beach.” It says the venue is dedicated to “the unifying power of sport and fandom.”

Which aligns well with at least one of its Marketing Cloud products—an augmented reality-powered platform called ARound, which it is beginning to roll out to stadiums in the Big Leagues and other venues.

The setup will be located at Cannes’ La Mandala beach where visitors can participate in a handful of popular sports like pickleball, volleyball, soccer and flag football.

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Also on tap: discussions with inspirational creatives, brands, marketers, athletes, coaches and league officials about the future of sport and fandom, and the impact sport has on shaping global culture. 

Here’s a video mockup of the planned space.

"At Sport Beach, we're building an experience that showcases the unifying power of sport and the ability of fandom to drive loyalty, affinity, and advocacy around the world," said Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn. "There's a reason sport is so magnetic: it is entertainment, culture, art, technology and so much more. Sport is all about fandom and we believe that fandom is the future of business transformation."

Lots of the holding company’s agencies will be participating including 72andSunny, Anomaly, Allison+Partners, Assembly, Code and Theory, Doner, Forsman & Bodenfors, GALE, Instrument and National Research Group.

And much of the video and audio content created from the beach will be distributed across freely accessible channels, the company said.

The program is still coming together and Stagwell is looking for brands, sports leagues/teams, media platforms and others to “partner on the ground,” at the Sport Beach, which will be produced by Team Enterprises in partnership with Cheerful Twentyfirst.

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