ADCN live from Cannes: Mark van Iterson

door Mark van Iterson

Arrived yesterday, Monday evening, in Cannes. Dove into the Mediterranean (wow!), had a quick dinner and worked until midnight on my talk for Tuesday. Making the slides just a bit nicer, deleting some slides that will make it too long, rehearsing it in my head. So today, Tuesday, is my first real day. Exciting! Although I have a bit of experience here, being at the world’s biggest, leading festival of creativity, with all the hot-shots, wannebe hot-shots, and other creative people from all over the planet, is always so thrilling and inspiring. And this time is extra special. I’ll be on stage, speaking about Design at Heineken, and we’ll be awarded Creative Marketer of the Year 2015. In the Palais, on the Boulevard. In a setting that’s famous thanks to Marion Cottillard, George Clooney, and that sort of poor bastards. It’s a tough job, but I’ll gladly do it.

The day starts with a quick breakfast in the speakers lounge in the Palais. And once more going through my presentation. To focus. Deleting a couple more slides, because I know I’m always too optimistic about what I can fit in half an hour …

Time to walk thought the showcased design shortlist. Proud to see our Amsterdam Originals – special edition Rijksmuseum bottles by dbod ! But also Flowering teabags; beautiful ! Intermarché fresh juice; not the obvious crafty solution, but the hero on the label is the exact time the juice was made. Brilliantly relevant and to the point.

And the Airbnb logo. It resembles the elegant simplicity of the paper-clip. And is also meaningful, playful and timeless. Good design doesn’t need 30 or 60 seconds to tell its story.

Then cueing for Jamie Oliver, interviewed on stage by Mr. Edelman. I love cooking, I love intuitive cooking, so I love Jamie Oliver. Impressive to hear his passionate cry for good food. Great inspiration too, because I’m a big believer in cross pollination. His vision has nothing to do with design, nor Heineken, but it will one way or the other inspire my design thinking …

His quote of the day: When I started 17 years ago, cooking was for girls, not for boys. Now also boys cook; they understand it can get you girls. Strong inside.

Quickly downstairs to ‘my’ stage. A large open area, with some seats in front of the screen. It’s already pretty well filled. Concentration. Go! Good flow, people laughing, clapping, more people joining. That’s fun, try to attract more crowd on the go by grabbing their attention. The closure of my speech is the reveal of a new open innovation program: TALENT LAB – MODERATION. We will work with 10 young talents from 5 countries that never won a Gold Lion yet (Bulgaria, Greece, DRC, Nigeria, Vietnam), to develop concepts that will stimulate responsible beer consumption; that will make moderation cool and sexy.

I was still a bit too optimistic and ended 4 minutes late. But the crowd was excited and apparently enjoyed it! I invited them to follow me to the roof-terrace, to do the Q&A up there, with some refreshing special Lion Cans, and with the newly developed hoptails; mixes that reinvent the beer ritual and show that beer is more than just the regular pint. This way everyone can experience a bit of our vision of the future experimentation projects.

Mission accomplished; positive reactions, and we’re Heinekenizing Cannes! Met an enthusiastic journalist and a student from Peru, couple of eager creatives from Nigeria, group of cool Danish guys, Wharton professor, and a few marketers from SAB Miller (Grolsch, Urquell, Peroni, ..) asking for some more background…

On to the typical Cannes hard work: Briefly pick up the entry-wristband for the legendary MassiveMusic-MediaMonks party on Wednesdaynight (on our roof-terrace, with Heineken Lions Cans!) Drinks with Edelman PR at the Martinez poolside, drinks with W+K on a nice sea-view roof. Get the sweaty clothes off (Cannes is hot this year !) and swim in the sea. Salad on the beach, while writing this piece and finetuning my ADCN – Amsterdam Creativity presentation for Thursday. In the meantime my gorgeous team fixed the issues with the stage builders, potential shortage of beer, got the hostesses amazingly dressed and exactly in time in my presentation, briefed the photographer, and of course over the past years delivered all the work I now show off with on stage. Here’s to you team! Finally, I’ll have one more Heineken at the gutter bar. Just one, starting to make moderation cool!

Wow, our French colleagues knew which bar to focus on: the gutter bar is fully dressed with Heineken. We can be sure that Cannes knows which beer brand has creativity at its heart. Here’s to thirst for creativity!

Today ADCN live from Cannes Lions also features RA*W Reporters Jill van Emmerik & Valentine Valé. Yesterday we covered the day of speaker Mark Woerde from LEMZ and ADCN board member Wesley ter Haar from MediaMonks. Make sure to come back tomorrow for the ADCN live from Cannes Lions reports of MassiveMusic’s Hans Brouwer and our board member Reinier Steures from Natwerk.

De ADCN doet onder de noemer 'ADCN Live from Cannes' verslag van het 62ste Cannes Lions Festival.

Lees alles over het 62ste Cannes Lions Festival in het Cannes Lions 2015 dossier van Adformatie.