reflection

Maddie Fiorante
“Wow, you sound sooo American.”
I shudder. Yikes, I think. Here I am, the south of France, at a party I shouldn’t even be
allowed to attend, surrounded by creative thinkers with real jobs. My Type A personality kicks in, anxiety is rising, telling me I don’t belong here and already look an idiot. I turn my student badge around.
“It’s okay, I am too.” Thank God.
This moment begins a conversation leading to some of the most insightful career advice
I could ever receive. Despite the buckets of rosé, giant pool with flamingo floaties, and people mostly under the age of 30 years old, I discovered more about the industry from those up and coming than I ever thought possible.
The person who recognized my American-ness, Austin Campbell, went on to entertain me by answering every question I had. Why are you American but your badge says Germany? (Ohmygod Maddie, you can’t just ask people why they’re white!) What is your company like? What is Germany like? What are you competing in? How did you get the idea? Where did you go to ad school? Was it helpful? Are you single? Etc.
Austin not only let me annoy him with my questions while leisurely swimming at the pool, but continued to give me advice unprompted and recruit advice from his friends around him. When asked why, he said, “Because if I was a student here I would have died to hear from anyone.”
He had two main pieces of advice: 1) Find a good mentor before finding a good company. It doesn’t matter where you work, but who you work for that will teach you the most. 2) If everything fails, sell fake IDs. You’ll make $4,000 a month.

I thought a lot about what Austin said. I’ve been obsessed with Wieden + Kennedy since I was in high school, but now, I don’t feel this insane pressure to be WK material as soon as I graduate. Instead, I can do the very thing I’ve loved about Cannes: learn. After being inspired by this festival and all the creative people I met, the one thing I most want to do is learn all that I can about the industry.
Meeting another American who now works abroad, and just won a Lion for his own incredible idea (!!!) opened me up to a new life I never thought possible. Now, I’m inspired to live and work abroad, something I never would have thought to do before this trip.
When I first moved from Portland to Athens, everything felt unpredictable and confusing. I don’t like sweet tea, have never been fishing, I drive a Prius, and prefer rain boots over cowboy boots. Since the move, I have learned to adapt my life and love being in such a weird place. And now, after learning to seek out mentor opportunities rather than dream jobs right away, and after pushing myself to embrace a new culture and get excited about other ones, I am overwhelmed with possibility and desire to come back to Cannes in the hopes of winning a Lion.

Commercial 3

For my final commercial I chose to critique a commercial I found really effective and hilarious. It’s short, snappy, and quick to the point, featuring a famous celebrity known for comedy. It is “Cat Filter” by Goodby Silverstein & Partners for Common Sense Media The children start by sitting at a table saying they miss their dad, and all get in a fight about who misses him more. After their voices start to raise, panning to a very confused and upset looking mom, the camera shows Will Farrell playing on his phone at the of the table saying “everyone shut up this filter makes me look like a cat”. Although it’s a simple message and only a few seconds long, it is a hilarious take on a public service announcement to promote human interaction away from technology once in a while, a simple family friendly PSA. I think it’s so clever as a job to those who really can’t be off their phone and I love that instead of an angsty teen or brat child it features a dad, part of the older generation who generalize millennials for being on their phones but then also can’t open Facebook. If I were to critique it I would find fault first in that it’s a table of white people only, and that the children fighting over missing their dad is a bit much, it would almost be funnier if they just said “yeah I miss him too” and all looked sad until it showed Will playing on his phone saying the cat filter line. Overall though for a short PSA using humor instead of sad/fear emotions is clever and think using Will Farrell plays a huge part of why it’s so funny. It definitely wouldn’t have the same appeal with a normal dude. It is likely the most effective way to create a PSA I’ve seen. 

Day 5

Day 5

It is the last day of the festival. I’m so sad. This was my peak in life, nothing else I do will ever be as cool as this. So, morning began Patagonia’s marketing director for Europe. He talked a lot about community and the strides the company is taking to get on board with consumer preferences regarding helping the planet and even being politically engaging such as their website portraying a negative view of Trump (which I wish he would have talked more about). The only thing I can critique is that a lot of what he said has already been said at the festival, so I kind of felt like I had heard it all before. Then I went to a talk about AI, which was out of my comfort zone but I had been told to learn about something other than PR at least once while I was there. I wanted to try to go to a speaker about something I had NO information on, and since I just got into Grady I didn’t much about AI before this trip, or how it worked. The speaker was amazing, he definitely had prepared and I loved what he had to say by using tons of examples. Honestly, a lot of it went over my head, but I liked the idea of making AI so smart it can weed out the fake news in just seconds. I know there is a stigma to it being kind of scary, but that’s what people said when the Internet was invented too. I don’t think it is something to fear, rather than learn to would be absolutely world changing. Also, I learned that AI understands the difference in denotation and connotations, like apple vs. Apple company. I also went to a badass beach leaders session with Chief Creative Officer Alexander Schill. Honestly, it wasn’t the most helpful advice in the world, again was a lot of the same ideas of confidence, believing in yourself, it’s a changing world, technology, it takes a village. There was a lot more to all the speakers than just that, but it makes sense that the last day of the festival would have a lot of the same information and advice being repeated. Still all good to know. Now, off to the FINAL award show! Thank you Cannes for an unforgettable week.

Day 4

Day 4

It is Thursday. I’ve never been so dead and so alive at the same time. I haven’t eaten a real meal in days, haven’t slept at all, my shower scheduled is so messed up, but I am literally learning an incredible amount and having the best time ever. Today was my favorite day since it was a lot of PR. I started by going to the Jason Kreher meeting, where I had a small anxiety attack because of my excitement and feeling of pressure to meet someone who could potentially help me get my dream job. He made us all a little more relaxed about existing in general as millennials but also about eventually getting a job. Although he told me to chill I most likely will not chill even a little bit. I think I was born in a full fledged panic and have stayed that way since then. Anyways, loved hearing what he had to say. I’m feeling a little lost in the PR/Ad/creative word, I’m not sure where I’ll fit in yet but he encouraged us to find something we like to do and follow that path until we’ve learned a lot. I have absolutely no idea what that will be yet, which is wild since I used to always have a “plan” for careers since basically childhood. I’m realizing I should just follow my own thing. Then, I went to some Google speakers (who both liked my tweet about the discussion!) and felt all they had to show was very powerful, but a bit repetitive. Both of them multiple times introduced an accomplishment as something they were instructed to throw together in 2 days or 2 weeks or something insane and they would end up making incredibly impactful content such as an app and campaign to help Syrian refugees. It felt like they were basically downplaying everything they had done just to make the impact, such as virtual reality of dinosaurs to support sustainability on earth, that much more amazing. After that, I headed to the Martinez Hotel and met briefly with Gilad Kat. Honestly, he was very nice and supportive to the us as students, but I absolutely hated his Gillette shaving campaign. I feel like maybe it’s just because I don’t like babies or complicated technology very much, but I just thought that was odd and he didn’t give us much insight to getting where he is now. The rooftop was pretty sick though. THEN I went to the KFC + Wieden talk, which was overwhelmingly hilarious and entertaining. I feel so intimidated by WK, like how will I ever be witty or clever or funny enough to work for them?? The two of them telling their story of rebooting KFC while explaining their genius behind it was both a great learning experience and just proved that anything can be done in this industry. So I also went to the awards ceremony last night which was so inspiring and fun, and now I honestly can’t wait to figure out my path and how I want to go down this road so I can land a fabulous job and hopefully compete in Young Lions. After the awards I got into a yacht party with my ~networking magic~, basically had the best time ever and acted so cool as though it was my 100^th time on a yacht, and now I’m ready to POWER THROUGH ALL THE SLEEP AND FOOD DEPRIVATION FOR THE LAST DAY OF CANNES LIONSSSS! I’m sad it’s over. But it was in fact, the best.