The week of June 21^st, the annual Cannes Lions 2015 Advertising Festival took place in Cannes, France. The beautiful beach city was taken over by 40,000 participants representing agencies, brands, media and technology companies. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff spoke, discussing the impact of data on customer success with a panel of guests that featured Will.i.am, Ulrik Nehammer, CEO of Coca-Cola Germany and Franc Le Moal, CIO of Louis Vuitton.

As a first time attendee at Cannes, I spent most of my time taking in the festival and assessing the value of the event for Salesforce. While I have been in the digital marketing and advertising for over twenty years, it was amazing to see the importance of the Cannes Lions festival for the industry. Media, creative and strategic agencies large and small from around the world sent their top leadership. CEOs and CMOs from the world’s top brands were there. Huge deals get done at Cannes – many people I spoke with miss the festival events entirely and are there primarily to meet clients and ink relationships. I can attest to that – while I was working for a well known digital agency several years ago, we were purchased by a major holding company – the deal was closed at Cannes.

Salesforce, of course, has a strong and growing footprint in the marketing technology space. Our Marketing Cloud allows agencies and brands to connect to their customers one to one and offers industry-leading solutions for email marketing, social monitoring and advertising, and creating 1:1 customer journeys across multiple media channels.

As the General Manager of Salesforce’s Creative Group, my interest in Cannes extended beyond our product opportunities. Our team creates all of our advertising and marketing communications and I was particularly interested in the best work coming out of the advertising industry as well as finding great talent to join the team.

What really impressed me, however, was the opportunity that Cannes offered for smart technology companies. Two brands were particularly impressive: Google and Facebook. Each took a different approach for leveraging the festival to promote their services and both succeeded admirably.

Google

Google’s main focus for Cannes was the power of YouTube for advertisers, with a healthy dose of Android and mobile search marketing. They took over a prime spot on the beach outside of the festival and created an immersive, fun and always on location for festival-goers named Google Beach. Themed as a very casual exhibition and presentation space, the beach combined a series of entertaining exhibits that brought you into the world of Google and got you to stick around. A wooden wall allowed you to use coding basics to formulate different smoothie drinks, which would then be created for you on the fly by a barista – coding 101 meets beach refreshment. YouTube stars The Slow Mo Guys filmed people doing cool things that look great using a high speed camera and slow motion (think water balloon fight) and allowed them to post the results to social media. A different area allowed folks to build and customize their own pair of Google Cardboard, introducing everyone to their entry into virtual reality (Cardboard won the Cannes Gold Lion for Mobile). All of this with two stages featuring lectures and entertainment, a volleyball tournament and room to dip your feet in the ocean. It was very impressive.

Facebook

The other brand that jumped out at me was Facebook. Facebook also took over prime beach location but used it in a very different way. While more staid and buttoned up than Google, the environment was very much on brand. Facebook held their own award ceremony celebrating campaigns that deeply integrated into Facebook in innovative ways. The overlap between these winners and the Cannes Lions winners was no surprise considering that everything has social elements these days, but it was a great way to bring the work front and center to the Facebook brand.

One of their key goals is to promote Instagram as an advertising platform and they did an interesting if not wholly convincing job of showcasing brand integration through an Instagram gallery which also featured a professional photographer to capture your own Instagram moment. A fascinating and useful exhibit showcased the typical experience for mobile users around the globe. Mobile devices of all kinds representing the most common phones in different parts of the world were set up with speed and bandwidth caps. Each device allowed visitors to see how people experienced Facebook – text-centric, slow and using different operating systems. As an American used to 4G data and the latest iPhone, it was a great way to see how most people experience the mobile web.

As I threaded my way through the festival and these brand experiences, I was acutely aware that Salesforce has the opportunity to have an equally immersive and interesting brand experience at Cannes. Salesforce Connections, our annual conference dedicated to marketing technology, had wrapped up the week prior and the opportunity to promote our ideas, our philanthropy and our people was top of mind. Google and Facebook succeeded in bringing relevant industry people into their brands in a fun, immersive and casual way. The environments were engaging, there were opportunities to have a glass of wine, network and play. They felt authentic while also matching the vibe of the festival and the town. I look forward to showcasing Salesforce in a similarly powerful and compelling way.

J.D. Swartz is VP & General Manager, Creative and Digital, Salesforce.

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