Sapient Nitro is out with its second Cannes-themed inforgraphic, each of which highlights a decade of advertising memes and themes. What we have today, is a look at the sixties and, well, the fact that lots of guys now where red pants. Oh and the fact that Paula Green was a rockstar creative in the 1960′s.

Excerpt from:
Red Trousers the New Trend at Cannes

Written in March following SXSW in Austin

While we knew this was the case for several years now, SXSW Interactive has become a huge event generating conversation the world over. This year’s event generated 1.1 million tweets in 5 five days across 200 countries and 19 languages.

Social media monitoring company Synthesio created an infographic summarizing global social media conversation about the Austin, Texas event. Without surprise, the U.S generated the most (71%) conversation followed by the UK (4.6%) and Canada (4.4%).

Some say SXSW is the new Cannes. In some respects, it is. As the advertising industry moves more towards technology and content solutions versus Super Bowl-style creative solutions, this shift in mentality may make sense. But it will be a very long while before the advertising industry gives up its Rose-filled afternoons on the Carlton Terrace or the massive beach parties that occur every night which, by the way, put even the best parties at SXSW to shame.

But parties are not the primary reason to attend a conference or festival. It’s to connect with people, ideas and technologies that fuel a different sort of creativity. A creativity that results in conception of technologies and content that are of use to consumers who have certain needs and have gone looking for solutions to address those needs.

Of course, that’s not to say “regular” advertising doesn’t attempt to address people’s needs. It does. It’s just far less efficient than technology or content-based solutions.

Everyone has heard of Nike Fuelband. It’s the classic example of technology put to use to create a product that serves the specific needs of a certain set of people. But it’s not an ad. It’s a product. It’s also a product that does a pretty good job advertising the Nike brand name without beating one over the head with an interruptive-style commercial.

Everyone has heard of content marketing. Ever since the original Yahoo! was born (and probably before), people have been able to turn to the internet when they have a need. If a brand has well-SEO’d content available to that information seeker, that brand is far more likely to draw that person into its acquisition funnel than a brand that doesn’t.

That, of course, is one of the pillars of inbound marketing; the creation of content that educates, informs and satiates the needs and wants of consumers. It also includes SEO, social media, lead management, lead nurturing, email marketing, marketing automation and more.

The days of Cannes-style industry celebration may be limited. While some slam SXSW for getting too big and promise they won’t be back next year, we think they will. Other wise, they may be stuck alone on the Carlton Terrace drinking Rose and watching the tumbleweeds roll down the Croisette.

However, for SXSW to become the new Cannes, it simply must improve programming. With hundreds of over overlapping panels chosen, mostly, by popular vote resulting in a very high percentage of lame ass flops, the event comes nowhere near the high quality, highly curated content of Cannes. At Cannes, there are far fewer panels but they are of the highest quality and well worth attending either to educate or to inspire.

And inspiration is a powerful thing. Inspiration can lead to the creation of amazing things. And amazing things have a far better chance of influencing people than a better way to get a Highlight of where your friends are.

That said, Cannes places a lot of emphasis on creativity for creativity’s sake. In one sense, that’s not bad. After all, creativity fuels the development of wonderful things that can result in the development of killer products and services. On the other hand, winning a Gold Cannes Lion, in some respects, just means your work was prettier and more “creative” than everyone else’s.

But as we said before, Cannes has killer content that can truly inspire. It’s not just about the awards. In a nutshell, Cannes is a well-oiled machine with a highly specific agenda. SXSW, conversely, is looser, more egalitarian and frenetic. Both styles have their advantages. And disadvantages.

What are your thoughts? How are SXSW similar? How are they different?

Read the rest here:
How Do Cannes and SXSW Compare and Contrast?

So yesterday — actually Sunday night — some witty soul (and I use that phrase ever so graciously) decided it would be fun to hack Adrants on the eve of Cannes Lions making it impossible for us to share with you all the event’s goodness. Well. we’re back.

But does it really matter? Does anyone really care? When we have AdWeek’s Tim Nudd and Gabriel Beltrone killing it in Cannes, an entire army of reporters from Ad Age, stellar tweets from Ogilvy, a One Question video series from Advertising Week, live coverage from Campaign and PR Week and the #canneslions Twitter hashtag which — if you allowed yourself — you could stare at 24/7…do we really need Adrants?

Two years ago, I was in Cannes on Yahoo’s dime to cover the event for the brand’s Scene publication. I’d like to think we (myself along with former Adrants Editor Angela Natividad and Adland’s Ask Wappling) did a great job encapsulating the week’s activity. Last year, I couch-surfed Cannes using Storify to compile all manner of content to share with those not fortunate enough to enjoy La Croisette for a week. This year, I was game for the same. But this hack — combined with the increasing proliferation of event coverage — has sort of taken the wind out of my sails.

In two weeks, I’ll be sitting on the beach on Cape Cod hopefully without a care in the world. But, honestly, I have a sneaking suspicion I won’t yet have recovered from the regret I now feel for both not having been in Cannes this year and, as well, realizing, it’s not as easy as it once was for Adrants to wield the weight it once had in this industry.

As it should be, everyone (brand and individual) now has their own soapbox. Who really needs the media when everyone with a blog or a Twitter account can report and comment on anything en mass? Yes, analysis and reflection are still important but when most never read what they retweet, what’s the point? Why bother? Why go to all the effort of attempting to create valuable content when all today’s metrics care about are likes, retweets, pins, plusses, shares, etc.?

While Adrants has gained tens of thousands of Twitter followers, it has also seen a decline in site visits. Part of this, of course, is due to Google fuckery but I’d venture to say a significant portion of this decline is due to the fact people simply never visit the site. They just see the headline on Twitter, retweet it and move on. Or, of course, our content could just suck.

I’m certainly not saying everyone has turned into a mindless social media savant but it’s a little difficult to remain motivated in a world where Mashable rewrites the same story five times a day with a different headline just to garner love and traffic from Google. Or when Business Insider writes wildly overblow/impossible to ignore headlines that have little to do with the actual story. Or when every brand and agency realizes (correctly) that they should be creating their own content rather than rely on the media to do it for them. Is it any wonder people just retweet stuff without reading? There’s simply too much to consume.

Now I’m not bitter. Well…maybe just a little. I’m sure I’ll continue to share my voice with those who care. Even with those who just want to retweet the headlines. No, really, that’s OK. But in the ten plus years of Adrants’ existence, we’ve gone from “Adrants can make or break your campaign” (yes, someone actually said that) to a has-been, also-ran entity afloat in a sea of similar content fueled with financial muscle with which we simply can not compete.

We think Bob Garfield got out of this rat race just in time.

Here is the original post:
Adrants is Back. Does Anyone Care? #CannesLions