Simon Hayes + Giles Clayton Cannes Diary: Pt 5

Simon Hayes and Giles Clayton, a young creative team from J. Walter Thompson Sydney, have competed in the Print category of the Cannes Young Lions competition. The pair write exclusively for CB.

It was day five and we were more than a little tired of looking at advertising, speaking about advertising and hearing talks from cool non-advertising people get painfully shifted back to advertising. Plus hearing Gilles Peterson speak rather than play records seems kind of counter intuitive. So we decided to get the hell out of Cannes.

We jumped on the next train to Antibes (pronounced “AN-TEA-BEZ” if you are Australian and “AUN-TEEB” if you care) on a mission to trade corporate creativity for actual culture.

We strolled the quaint streets getting the most cliché photos of architecture we could find. Then cruised through the craft markets in search of the perfect ‘French-inspired’ gifts for our girlfriends. Did we get them a Dalmatian tea-towel? Perhaps a bottle opener in the shape of baguette? We can’t say too much more just incase they read our blog… Actually wait a minute, why the fuck would they bother reading our blog?

Gift’s purchased (hope you like baguettes, babes) we set off on foot to find our first real taste of culture since arriving in France. We found it in the form of the Picasso Museum, which was perched on top of a hill in a stone castle looking out over the Mediterranean Sea. Pretty impressive. The actual Picasso works were great. Rooms full of his line drawings, surreal sculptures and colourful paintings that covered the walls – strangely all without a client logo or a product shot of an ice cream. Some of the other work – by Sollange we think – wasn’t really up our alley. A black canvas with a white line through it? That’s just lazy.

We left the gallery feeling very proud of ourselves and strolled back along the bay. Just then, like a mirage rising in the desert, a giant Ferris Wheel appears in the distance. So much joy, SO MUCH JOY! We turned to each other, squealing like 12 year old girls, and began to run. 5 Euro each later and we were slowly rotating in the sun like a fat sunburt ad-man being rolled over by his pool boy. Couple of #cuteteamshots later and we were ready to go. 

Tourist thing done, we hooked back up with our agency crew for dinner and proceeded to dabble the finest delicacies our CEO’s credit card could afford. Cheers for the lobster. 

From dinner it was straight to the global J. Walter Thompson party, which we can’t tell you about because we can’t remember, but needless to say kicked on into the night. Good day.