Big Tent braves the beach in Cannes

When the advertising world convened this week in the South of France for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, we pitched up our Big Tent to debate innovations in social media and the marriage of technology and creativity.

Our first session featured Noelle Jouglet from Kony 2012 sharing how their documentary video garnered 100 million hits in 6 days and mobilised thousands of young people around the world to take part in advocacy work against the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Bradley Horowitz from the Google+ team shared his insights into how the social web is providing new ways for everyone from Barack Obama to Cadbury to interact with their supporters in meaningful ways. Both speakers shared important lessons about how to empower audiences for the marketers in the audience.



In the second of our Big Tents in Cannes, Arianna Huffington and Iain Tait from Google’s Creative Lab took part in perhaps a counterintuitive conversation for a technology company: how to best disconnect from technology in order to recharge your creative juices. After sharing how long each speaker slept the night before, Arianna and Iain’s conversation explored issues as diverse as breaking our obsession with being ‘always on’, the Tetris challenge of your inbox and making time for your soul.

After this busy week of Big Tents we’ll be recharging our batteries ahead of our next event in Sendai, Japan on the role of technology in preparing and responding to crises.

Posted by Jon Steinberg, External Relations