Paul Yole in Cannes: 5 take-outs from day 1

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Cannes2015_Ambient1.jpgPaul Yole has been blogging from the Cannes Lions Festival for the past 9 years. This year he is highlighting 5 points a day for his daily coverage.

This day 1 or day 2 thing is really freaking me out.

It used to be so simple. Cannes started on Monday so people arrived on Sunday and the week took care of itself after that.

Now, Sunday is the new Monday so instead of relaxing in the Mediterranean sun, it is seminars and workshops all day. Here are the top 5 things I found out.

1. Don’t sit in the seminars all day

The series of Forums has some really great speakers, with a different them each day. Sunday was all about visual language.

Unfortunately I missed a really great talk and demonstration from The Mill’s Rama Allen. If you want to see his work, have a look at his web site here http://www.rama-allen.com/ or subscribe to the Cannes Archive.

2. The new Cannes Archive works well

I took a tour of the Archive, which is unlike me. It has everything you need from the talks and the work going back to 2001, and it’s fully searchable.

But with subscription prices starting at 4,950 euro it’s not cheap.

3. Sean Rad didn’t reveal much

The founder of Tinder has a phenomenal story to tell, with almost 8 billion matches since 2012. That’s a lot of swiping – in fact about 16,000 every second apparently.

Sean was a bit vague however when he was asked the really probing questions, like give us some hard data about the results brands are getting from the site.

4. We are in the dark ages when it comes to understanding the brain

So claims Dr Itiel Dror, a renowned neuroscientist for University College London. He gave cognitive neuroscience examples from medicine, forensics and aviation to demonstrate how we make decisions.

The brain, says Dr Dror, is interested in distinctiveness so it is not enough to send out a message, you have to get it stuck into the memory.

That, I think, is what agencies have been trying to tell clients since year dot.

5. It’s all about BD2K

I couldn’t resist throwing in some Cannespeak. It stands for Big Data To Knowledge.

Go figure.