Emily Beautrais’ Cannes Diary #2

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image001 (1).jpgEmily Beautrais, creative director at Clemenger BBDO Wellington is representing NZ on the Cannes Brand Experience + Activation Lions jury. Beautrais, along with most of the other NZ and Australians jurors writes exclusively for CB.

I have case study music stuck in my head on repeat. There’s always that one piece that’s running around the industry as the go-to results music, and there’s definitely one in Brand Experience this year. You might have heard it. It sounds like a circus and it goes ‘derrr-nerner-dernerner-dernernerner’. Ok you’ve got zero chance of guessing it from that. You’ll hear it. Trust me, at some point you’ll hear it. It’s the Brand Experience equivalent of the ever popular ‘for good’ results music. You’ll definitely know that one: ‘Ahh, ahh, ahhiahhah, ahh, ahh, ahhiahhah, ahh, ahh, ahhiahhahhaaahhh’. For the last 2 years it’s been on EVERYTHING that needs the addition of an angel singing to know it’s done good. To the point it pops into my head now every time I do something slightly good and it gets results, like someone walking into the printing room and effortlessly printing reams after I’ve replenished the paper.

And if music isn’t enough to make your results seem legit, I’ve been learning some other great tricks:

• Break convention with your use of decimal points and commas, so 75.00 becomes 7,500, or 75.000.000

• Simply move the comma, so 7,500 becomes 75,00 and 75,000 becomes 750,00

• Set lower expectations for your own creativity, so you can say ‘it was 80% more effective than we predicted’

• Just say it changed the game. No need to mention what game – that’s not important.

Fortunately, now we’re down to the shortlist, we’ve seen a whole lot of sublimely clever brand experiences that didn’t need any extra tricks to sell us. Some surprising, some hilarious, some thought provoking, and all working their tits off for the brand.

Another day where I’ve left that dark room feeling super inspired by what our industry can do in this world, and the festival hasn’t even officially begun yet.