Some goings-on at Cannes...
The days of simply showing up at Cannes to watch some commercials and shoot the breeze are over. This year, a number of WPP companies are hosting and participating in many of the key events at the festival, helping to turn Cannes into a serious exploration of ideas as well as a creative and communications showcase.
Here is a round-up of what WPP companies and individuals will be doing at this year's Cannes Lions festival. Look out for updates during the event.
The
Cannes Debate will be hosted by WPP CEO
Martin Sorrell, who will be interviewing one of the world's top marketers - Keith Weed, new CMO of Unilever. They will be exploring what global marketing companies including Unilever are going to be looking for in future from media and content and the effects on advertising and marketing budgets. The debate takes place on Friday 25th June at 12pm.
After winning worldwide plaudits last year, WPP Digital company
Schematic is again bringing its unique Touchwall to the festival. The giant interactive display screen is situated in the Palais des Festivals and offers delegates a variety of ways to interact, from finding their way around the festival to social networking and setting up meetings. To identify themselves, attendees touch their festival badges to the screen - each badge is embedded with a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag.
Music is at the heart of events offered by two WPP companies.
Grey is hosting its fourth annual music seminar at Cannes this year, in which worldwide creative director Tim Mellors will be talking to Yoko Ono, the avant garde artist. "Yoko Ono needs no introduction to anyone touched by the music scene for more than 40 years," said Mellors, former President of the Cannes Festival and multiple Cannes Lion winner. "Her marriage to and influence on John Lennon is legendary. Her deep knowledge of the alternative music scene and people like John Cage, the founder of Fluxus, are seldom given the credit due for their influence on Lennon's solo career." The event is introduced by Josh Rabinowitz, Director of Music, Grey New York.
And
Y&R is presenting a seminar entitled "Music Is Dead... Long Live Music" with a panel of music luminaries comprising Grammy award-winning producer Trevor Horn, musician and technology entrepreneur Thomas Dolby and
New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones, moderated by Y&R's Chief Insights Officer John Gerzema. They will be talking about the wave of disruptive new models which are remaking the 'business of making music' and in the process returning power to the artists and their fans.

Search for the World's Greatest Salesperson - Are you the One?
Cannes will see the culmination of the competition launched by
OgilvyOne to find the World's Greatest Salesperson. Three entrants have been selected to appear at this seminar to compete for the title, where they will each be asked to the Motorola Milestone phone (Droid in the US) The World's Greatest Salesperson will be decided by the audience during the session via real-time voting. Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, said: "We know that each of these finalists can sell a red brick. The final test of their salesmanship will be how well they can sell a real product in front of a live audience." OgilvyOne has also developed an app - Cannesdroid - that will be free to download by delegates. Further details at
www.youtube.com/ogilvy
Bridge Worldwide has also held a competition around the theme of 'burning questions' that forms the theme of its seminar. The discussion has been brewing online at
www.burningquestion.com since mid-March, where thought leaders around the world in business and marketing have shared their perspective on where the industry must shift. Those debating it in Cannes will include Sue Shim, CMO, Samsung Electronics, Indra Noovi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo, Marc Pritchard, CMO, P&G, and Mary Beth West, Global CMO, Kraft Foods.

Paul Taaffe and Charlie Todd preview the Hill & Knowlton seminar taking place at Cannes Lions.
Hill & Knowlton has launched its own TV channel, Cannes Eye, which will be broadcasting daily video reports and interviews from the festival. The channel also has news and Twitter feeds and can be found at
blogs.hillandknowlton.com/cannes/. For its seminar H&K has teamed up with anarchic prank organiser Improv Everywhere, to disseminate "how to cause successful scenes of chaos and joy in public places".
In the festival's workshop programme, meanwhile, Simon Silvester, the executive planning director of
Wunderman is presenting an event based on his book
Mobile Mania. All participants get a copy of the Atticus award winning book, and the chance to discuss its points - and rate them individually. The theme is: 'Always on. Always with you. Always connected. The world is changing as the cellphone becomes the computer.'
And David Harris, Executive Creative Director of Wunderman London, is hosting a seminar under the title: Where Does Inspiration Come From? It will explore where inspirational people get their creative spark from.

Simon Silvester, the Executive Planning Director at Wunderman, Europe, Middle East and Africa, explains why his workshop at Cannes Lions 2010 will focus on the latest developments in mobile technology
Another seminar not to miss is from
JWT. It's called Ideas People Want to Spend Time With and features CEO Bob Jeffrey, Creative Chairman, Continental Europe and Latin America, Fernando Vega Olmos, and Worldwide Planning Director Guy Murphy offering an inside peek at how three pioneering initiatives have impacted the industry, resulting in powerful interactive ideas from every corner of the globe.