Karen Ferry’s Cannes Diaries

Karen Ferry (left with Leo), senior copywriter at Leo Burnett Sydney took part in the new See It Be It programme in Cannes. Here she shares her experiences straight from the festival, exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Day 1

So, this is it. Cannes. Finally being here feels strangely surreal; a falsity of the imagination. Because, like most creatives in Australia, I haven’t been to Cannes before. The dream of teams being sent on the whiff of a shortlist died years ago. And the festival itself exists so much through the stories brought home from previous weary travellers. Cannes is (debatably) the holy grail of advertising trophies, and this festival our pilgrimage. Are you really full advertising if you haven’t had an overfoamed, overpriced cappuccino and partied at Gutter Bar?

But this year I have been chosen. Plucked from 600 entries of senior creative women from around the world to attend See It Be It, a female leadership program run by Cannes.

And so, as the planes descend in the chaos of flight and train strikes, the twenty international delegates begin to appear one by one in our hotel over the weekend, like characters in an Agatha Christie novel. This year, there’s attendees from India, Dubai, the US, Uruguay, Uganda, Lebanon, and even Legoland.

See It Be It was created by Cannes Lions after they noticed that delegate numbers in women dropped from 50% of attendees under the age of 30, to only 27% over the age of 30. Although they can’t change the makeup of the industry in a week, they can help senior women find the strength not to leave. And the program aims to teach us to share the knowledge we gain here with women back at our respective home countries.

And this year, the program is guided by the formidable and warm Chloe Gottlieb (far right). Her intention is to arm us with a toolkit that will help us lead from within.

After welcome speeches on Sunday and a dinner that looks like the supporting cast of the Little Mermaid served on platters, we start Monday with the first of three topics: resilience. Because the reality is, we will have shit thrown at us our entire lives. And no one can predict what it is – it could be something as insidious as unconscious bias within promotion selections, to sexual harassment and bullying. But the ability to not be ground down, or if you are, being capable to rebuild yourself after, is what’s vital.

This is broken through sessions, starting with a chat with Tea Uglow, who is my new Australian idol. There’s a press briefing. And an amazing workshop on developing resilient habits with Tanya Livesey. We learn different techniques on how to best work with our leaders, and how to be good leaders. How to train ourselves mentally to be better prepared for what comes up. And small, helpful things. Like doing power poses to flood testosterone through your body for an instant boost of confidence.

Outside of our sessions, the Palais is heaving. There are queues for sessions with celebrities. There’s hundreds of delegates repping China, which is intriguing for this Western-based festival. And there’s also branding everywhere. Posters strewn across the walls, like a uni campus. The positivity and change in the industry is thick in the air and it’s clear that advertising isn’t dead, it’s heading in a new direction. And if anything, it’s made it clear that female creative leaders have a place in it.

But resilience isn’t about being impervious and hard. You still need to appreciate your vulnerability and humanity. Chloe believes one of the keys to this is starting each day with gratefulness. And today, I’m grateful for the people that gave me the opportunities that led me here.

Ashadi Hopper, for hiring an Asian female copywriter over a decade ago, with no agency experience.

Sarah Palmer, for putting me forward for the AWARD Creative Leadership training.

Brendan Willenberg, for choosing me as co-head of AWARD School.

The producers at Gruen, who thought they should give a millennial with no fancy title but a lot of opinions a crack at being on TV.

And the See it Be It team, for choosing me to be here.

Each of these things could not have happened without the person before them giving me a chance. Because true leadership is about creating opportunities for the people underneath you, not hogging them for yourself. True leadership is knowing that the room you walked into, doesn’t need to be the same when you leave.

Day 2

Today, I met a knight and she wore a silk dress.

Her name? Sylvia Rotta.

I also met Dave Droga (R.I.P. me). Colleen DeCourcy. Kat Gordon and Lisen Stromberg from the 3% Movement. Names of famous industry leaders, now formed into advocates: of us. In between, we sit in on a lecture with Thandie Newton (above), British vogue editor Edward Enninful and Tiffany Warren from Ominicom.

Thandie explains that through her work to create diversity in film, “I’ve seen the industry change, and it’s about demand”. But Tiffany brings it home in a pretty undeniable way: “If we can stop people from smoking or raise money for cancer, we can create diversity as well”.

However, as I look around, it’s clear that in this hall they’re preaching to the converted. The people who need to listen to their message are on yachts on the shoreline, getting sunburnt through their Birkenstocks. It seems there’s two types at Cannes – those wanting to learn, and those who think they know enough.

And so, we continue to learn. The group then gets a crash course in doing killer award entries, and discuss aligning your values with your company’s and understanding your creative capital. We also all get heatstroke.

That night, we’re on the door list to the Spotify beach party, who are this year’s sponsors of See it Be It. Once we arrive, I’m told that the band warming up on stage with all the hair? They’re The Killers. It turns out this is one of the most exclusive parties of the year.

As they play, the crowd forming the moshpit is small but love singing along to songs with non-sensical lyrics from 2004. As I look behind us, people are lined up along the Croisette, watching the stage from the promenade. It struck me that being at this party is total privilege – having a better view and experience than the people not allowed through the gate. (Later on I find out that two APAC creatives watch the whole concert from a dingy in the ocean. Good on ’em.)

But on the floor, it’s amazing to have women from around the world dancing in one circle. And with that many diverse women gathered in one place, it starts to attract more women and people of colour to join. Everyone brings their own style, from their own background. And one woman dances barefoot, en-fucking-pointe.

Marie Kondo believes that when you go through a massive emotional change (like throwing out all the shit from your home), your body will become sick with the purging of toxins.

And on day three, I wake up with a killer throat infection. It’s only been 48 hours so far but I feel like I’ve gone through a year of change – of changing my mindset, my understanding of opportunities, and how I act, and perceive things. My whole understanding of the future and myself has shifted dramatically, and it’s a total mindfuck. We have our mentor sessions and I cry in all three.

And along with my emotions, things have started to get ridiculous. Our meetings have gone from sitting on floors in backstage corners of the Palais to penthouse suites. Common the rapper is in the carpark outside the Girls Lounge, and we’re being jettied out to Google Island for lunch. There, somehow – almost stupidly – I end up dining between Olympic gold medalist and activist Abby Warbach, a GMO of Google, and a heavy hitter from 72andSunny, as they talk about spatial awareness of leaders and the dangerous power of advertising messaging.

Abby is one of the keynote speakers of the lunch. The Google GMO Jabari Hearn references her Bernard commencement speech. She reiterates it again, telling the audience of 100+ C-suite execs that, “women are feared as a threat to our system, but they will be our salvation.”

As we leave the Google Island, she tells one of our delegates that her EQ is what will drive our industry forward, echoing Faith Popcorn’s lecture earlier in the week about the death of the homogenous, one-type-fits-all take on masculinity. Because, like Jonathan Kneebone’s talk at the AWARD summit last month, what will save creativity is heroing the individual. Heroing people from different backgrounds, with different stories and different ways of thinking. This isn’t just about how someone may appear on the outside. It’s about championing the unique dimensions that we each offer, and not training or hiring creatives to think the same. Because through the storm that technology and data may rain on us, the one thing that AI and machine learning can never replicate is human experience.

I’m not going to lie. I came into this programme a little unsure, but I feel like my heart has cracked open.

At our closing dinner in the hills, we piss off the restaurant staff by hanging around way past closing time, laughing, crying and group hugging for too long. As we talk about how we’ve all been changed by the experience, Tea Uglow shares that some people will always be critical of how commercial, scammy, fake and egotistical Cannes can be. But know that somewhere, out there in the festival chaos is a peaceful corner where people like us will be talking about love, and change, and the future.