The Cannes Lions Wrapup That Will Make You Feel As if You Went, Hangovers and All

Here is where I distill the Cannes experience and make a lot of reflections that the world will forget or, more likely, simply never read. So I'm gonna start with the videos and photos, culminating in the longest wrapup of Cannes ever, which you must all read or perish.

Not really. If, after all that, you still want to read the reflections, scroll all the way down.

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Conversations on Quitting the Cancer Stick

In advertising, we pick up a lot of habits - "creative" habits, mostly - that we occasionally are and aren't proud of, depending on our mood and who's looking. The Cannes Lions becomes a magnifier of all those habits: there, trapped in paradise for a week, people don't just drink until 5 in the morning; they often smoke as if all the weight of the world depends on it.

"Last night I knew it was time to go home because I started chainsmoking," complained Shannon Stephaniuk of Glossy. "I hate smoking more than anything else in the world!"

I suppose I believe her. I've never seen Shannon pick up a cigarette, not once, and I smoke a great deal, which usually outs the casual smokers in party atmospheres.

Anyway, this Cannes phenomenon leads to a lot of semi-casual conversation about why we all started smoking in the first place, which naturally drifts over to quitting and efforts to get there.

This is why I started smoking (in earnest, not counting the flirtation I had in college when my best friend gave me a pack of Vanilla Dreams for my 18th birthday): to eke a promotion out of a boss who only discussed "the future" with his subordinates during smoke breaks. I was 19, maybe 20.

"You know what Gabriel Garcia Marquez did to quit?" began Draftfcb ECD Mark Fiddes, rather grandly, at a beachside luncheon for production firm Mad Cow. "Gabriel Garcia Marquez buried his last packet of cigarettes. Big mound. It was something he could walk by and look at every day."

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This Picture Reminds Me of The Twins from 'The Shining'

If they were permitted to live, have careers and somehow still be creepy.

@DavidonDemand: Man at the Mercy of The Internets

Yesterday Chelsi and I had the curious experience of meeting @DavidonDemand.

Here's the story: David Perez, creative recruiter over at Leo Burnett Chicago, really wanted to come to Cannes. In its infinite kindness, LB found a practical reason to send him: he could promote Wildfire, the agency's self-conscious celebration of spontaneity in the art and craft of modern marketing.

So for the next seven days, this poor sod is strapped to a live feed. His job: to do everything Twitter tells him to do.

Can you imagine being at the mercy of the lulz internet for a week straight?

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Things I Now Know About Cannes

This is what I know about Cannes:

• It is humid, but not always sunny; often it rains in torrents, and street vendors make a nice profit selling umbrellas to unprepared visitors outside the Palais des Festivals. Be smarter than your deluded sun-thirsty colleagues: pack a spring coat and your own parapluie.


• For wifi that doesn't cost 20€ a night, you go to a flea-bitten hotel on a side street, not a Croisette institution. I quite like Hôtel Athénée, which is also 5 minutes walking distance from the Palais. Basic amenities are lost, but dude, we're talking about free wifi.

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