Cannes Lions day 4

My fourth day at the festival was a whirlwind – things were starting to pick up as we approached the middle of the week, and likewise the sessions I attended and things I learned only continued to increase.  The theme of this day seemed to be branding, both traditional and personal.  While I went to five talks, two of them stuck out to me and left a lasting impression.

The first of these influential talks was “Beyond the Image,” an interview with world famous fashion photographer Mario Testino.  Testino addressed the fact that a personal brand can be an intimidating thing to try and find, and then gave the audience advice on how to go about branding yourself while still staying authentic and true to what you are.  This could not have been more relevant to me; as I approach graduation in a few years and get closer to entering the professional world, I often find myself feeling as if it’s impossible to brand myself.  I could develop the brand of a company or product or person all day long, but if I don’t figure out what my personal brand is it will inevitably hinder my creative abilities as well as the ability to leave my mark on the work that I do.  Testino stressed that he would not have gained the success that he has if he had tried to change his personal brand to fit what others wanted; he cited his work with then unknown (but now supermodels) Gisele Bundchen and Cara Delevigne to prove this, because back when he first decided to photograph them he was widely criticized for not using better-known models.  His talk, while centric on him and his personal journey to find his personal brand, gave me a lot of hope because he said that the path to finding his personal brand was simple: he experimented over and over again, and then continued to do the things that ended up making him the proudest and the happiest of himself.  Hopefully I’ll be able to use the advice he gave to further investigate what I want my brand to reflect about myself.

The other talk that really made me think was “How Halsey Broke Out,” which consisted of Ryan Seacrest interviewing Halsey about how she built her career and her brand.  My favorite part of this talk was when Halsey described the creative marketing techniques that she and her team used to promote her newest album.  She made the characters in her music video essentially come to life by creating Twitter accounts for each character, interacting with fans and dropping hints about the album when the release date began approaching.  She and her team also went a step further by hiding maps and clues all over several cities, including fake real estate listings in newspapers and fake classified ads that only her fans that had been following the Twitter accounts would be able to recognize.  This unconventional marketing, while risky, ended up boosting her album sales by an enormous amount.  “The biggest mistake a director can make is not letting the audience get to know their characters,” the young singer said confidently.  While I did get the vibe that Halsey thought she could do no wrong in the world of marketing and advertising, I had never thought about unconventional marketing for things like music albums before, and her talk inspired me to consider these types of promotion in the future.  

While today was exhausting, it was also a lot of fun and I learned a lot.  I can’t wait to see what experiences and lessons the next half of the festival will bring!