Sophie Woods’ Cannes Diary: Day Four
Sophie Woods is a producer for The OTTO Empire and is attending her first Cannes Lions, attending as a ‘Young Lion’ delegate. She reports exclusively for Campaign Brief.
Well, Schoolies Cannes keeps rolling on. My friends always make fun of me because every year I lose my voice on the first day of Meredith Music Festival. Proud to say I made it to day four of Cannes. Might have something to do with all the yelling?
RICHARD CURTIS
SIR JOHN HEGARTY
FREIDA PINTO
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS
HBO CEO RICHARD PEPLER
CNN’S CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
JAMAL EDWARDS
MARK RONSON
KENNETH BRANAGH
MY HEART!
Whoawhoawhoa. Every second line in my notebook today was just ‘omg’ or ‘fark’.
SAWA’s seminar with Richard C, John H, Chiewtel E and Freido P centred around Richard’s ‘Project Everyone’ mission, which aims to get people talking and make politicians accountable for following through on UN mandated targets for social and ecological change. Their #wehaveaplan plan will give people a sense of what they’re fighting for, and use SAWA’s global cinema network to show an advert at the same time across the world to 7 billion people in October. Really amazing, inspiring stuff and seems to follow in a theme for Cannes.
Unilever’s ‘Marketing for People’ equally spruiked the message of advertising and brands’ power for social impact. In a time of absolute chaos in our content, how do you build trust? Keith Weed made the point that building purpose into brands based on goals including sustainability and social justice is the way to do so, while working towards a #brightfuture.
And then another way to hold governments responsible? Why political satire of course! I wish I had more notes from the talk with HBO and Julia Louis-Dreyfus but I was too busy clutching my heart the entire time. All my notes just say “CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour omg…Julia LD omg…CEO of HBO omg”. Wow really dropped the ball there but I’m hoping you can sympathise, it was a very overwhelming experience.
Ok so then Youtube held a seminar hosted by viral Youtube star Grace Helbig. She was joined by Jamal Edwards the genius behind unearthing stars like Ed Sheeren and Jessie Jay through his channel SBTV and Mark Ronson who everyone knows from being in every collaboration ever in the past 12 months. It was pretty surreal to see these guys but the best thing about this session? They finished 15 minutes early. When every other seminar I’ve gone to goes overtime or gets kicked off the stage, these damn Gen Y’ers went and became my favourite cliche of the day.
I finished my day with Kenneth Branagh being interviewed by The Guardian’s Katherine Viner. He is by leaps and bounds the greatest speaker I’ve seen so far. What a freaking incredible dude. Writer, director, actor, both on screen and on stage, and goddamned Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter. Another ‘omg’ in my notes. The biggest thing I took from him was that fear and panic are the biggest enemies to creativity. He meditates twice a day to calm the racing mind, listen to voices in his head in the moments of stillness, and to follow the ‘uninformed hunch’ rather than pander to the panic that becomes conjured up for a 
number of reasons; social media backlash, competing prerogatives, anxiety, etc. Pretty keen to find that guy and have a pint with him.
Does any of that make sense? I’m very delirious and seeing one of my idols Julia Louis-Dreyfus today did nothing for my equilibrium. My slow reflex time was very apparent when the wind whipped up my dress out the front of the entire bloody Palais but that’s ok, these things happen. Then straight after that I passed Chiwetel Ejiofor walking along the Croisette and when he made eye contact with me I choked on a baguette I was shoving into my mouth 🙁
Some lunatics brought an AI robot and have it on show down by the croisette, are they absolutely insane? Have they seen El Machina? That thing’s going to be wreaking havoc by week’s end.
Ok off to see the people now, bonne soirée!
Find Woods at hellootto.com.au.