Day #5

As the second half of the festival is coming to an end I've started to see a common theme among some of the seminars. Brands attach themselves to these big name actors, singers, and stars to attract a crowd. Sometimes the speakers are very intelligent, insightful, and well spoken. Other times, you can tell the speakers were paid a lot of money to come up with a cookie cutter speech and to deliver it with “swagger”. Lowe Down On The Croisette: A conversation with Rob Lowe and Gordon Bowen, was a bit of a disappointment. I am a fan of Parks and recreation and other movies and shows Rob Lowe has acted in, but i feel that the presentation was lacking any new information. I feel like everything Rob Lowe said I could have read on wikipedia. I think the most powerful and interesting presentations are the ones where the presenter tells a story most people don't know about. The common theme throughout the whole festival has been the art of storytelling and how advertisers need to take advantage of this. That being said, I think that there were only two main seminars I attended today were great.

The First Seminar I want to touch on was called: More Fun Than Anyone with Chris Wall, Vice Chairman, Creative at Ogilvy and Mather as well as Joe Pytka, Film Director with PYTKA. First off, I think that the title of the seminar described Joe Pytka perfectly. The man said whatever he wanted to say when he wanted to say it. When you’ve won as many awards as he has and worked with as many big name athletes and actors as he’s worked with, I believed he has earned this right.  His presentation style was very dry, very humorous and very real. As he rifled through the massive archives in his brain to recall his past, the audience became engulfed in his storytelling and felt as though we were watching his stories unfold right before our eyes. He went through and showed some of the best most interesting commercials of his career and told raw stories that most people had probably never heard before. One of the best commercials he showed was this ad he did for Pepsi (its funny):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnXArm-NViI

The next seminar was fantastic although it did not have much to do with marketing or advertising. This was a rare example where Ogilvy and Mather brought American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to speak of Cosmic Quandaries and Creativity. I believe Neil Tyson is one of the most brilliant minds in our world today. He was the man to discover that Pluto was not a planet therefore taking away the pizza in the planetary expression we all learned as children. Tyson took the audience through a step-by-step look at the periodic table and the respective countries that founded each element. He also took a look at the currency of many foreign countries and brought to light the fact that most of them pay respect to the great scientists of their past. Although the US has Benjamin Franklin on some currency, the bill features nothing of his work or any relation to his accomplishments as a scientist but focuses on the man as a founding father. I think Tyson was a fantastic speaker and I think the tweet below sums up his speech perfectly.  He was the only speaker at the festival so far to receive a standing ovation from the crowd. 

ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT OF THE FESTIVAL! I cant believe its going by this quickly. Trying my hardest to meet new and interesting people that will hopefully give me the chance to come back to this amazing festival.