Cannes Lions day 2

My second day at the Cannes Lions festival was much different than my first; maybe it was because I knew the lay of the land a bit better, maybe it was the abundance of rose at Connections Beach’s happy hour.  If the theme of my first day was learning, the theme of my second day would hands-down be experiencing all that the festival and its associated partners have to offer.

The first session I attended was “Stop Liking, Start Doing,” presented by the president of Pinterest, Tim Kendall.  Kendall focused on how the internet has become an addiction in recent years; he even challenged some audience members to put their phones in locked safes for the entirety of his hour-long presentation.  My favorite point that he made was that the promise of the internet was to connect us, but instead it has ended up consuming us.  Kendall prides himself in creating one of the first social media platforms that gets people off their feet by giving them ideas and equipping them with the tools necessary to carry them out.  With a future in digital media, it is important for me to remember that it is extremely unethical to use my content to keep people attached to their phones.

The next talk that I went to was “Health Wars: The Last Doctor & the Rise of Artificial Intelligence” by Dr. Vishal Nangalia.  Nangalia discussed the future of artificial intelligence as it pertains to healthcare and healthcare marketing, the most fascinating being that artificial intelligence could potentially be used to stand in for nurses in the near future.  The most interesting point that he made was that by 2025, many medical positions will be obsolete because of AI, which I find myself questioning.

The last session I went to was called “Mobile-Only Pioneers: What’s Next?” starring Maureen Taylor, Global Creative Director for Spotify.  She discussed how Spotify has begun actually branding their users’ music choices, a campaign entitled “branded moments.”  In essence, Spotify is able to allow marketers to reach whatever target market they want in the exact time that their market would be susceptible to their advertisement (for example, placing a Gatorade ad at the beginning of a workout playlist).  This concept is absolutely mind blowing to me; after all, music is one of the biggest indicators of how we’re feeling and what we are wanting, so branding these moments is absolutely genius because it lessens fear of being obsolete through selective retention by a huge percent.  In my future career in branding, I will be sure to remember how Spotify figured out how to harness what once was considered impossible information to collect: people’s feelings.