Day 2 at Cannes Lions... the adventure continues...

After a surprisingly great sleep I started day 2 early doors with a walk to the far marina with the aim of working my way back to the main hub for a jam packed day. 

Cannes wakes up early! The Female Quotient kicked off just after 7am with a morning work out and straight into the first session: 'Breaking the rules and crashing the glass ceiling' with Shelley Zalis & Maria Bartiromo from Fox Business Network.

I walked along the main drag past the Spotify, Pinterest, WPP, Facebook & Youtube installations then headed to the Havas cafe to meet-up with Tehmeena from The Drum. Nice surprise to meet a fellow Scot, well 2 fellow Scots actually! Great to see so much interest in Yoti and ProveMyAge.com.

Walking along the strip I was drawn to coloured sculptures of a gorilla, a T-Rex and 2 lions, I followed them into the most wonderful gallery called Galeries BARTOUX. Not part of Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity but I'm glad I took 15 minutes out to see a different type of creativity - absolutely amazing and very contemporary works of art. I'd love a piece or two in my house!

Back to the Female Quotient for 45 mins to catch 2 conversations on Equal AR: Connecting with Diverse customers, and Stereotype Busters; Male leaders advancing change. 2 great discussion that finished far too quickly with Claire Valoti, Snap Inc, Julia Goldin, Lego ( I love your sustainable bricks made from sugarcane in the news just now), Neil Waller, David Shing, Luis Machorro and many more.

Journal House was my next stop for a catch up with Johnny Wright. Lots of food for thought to follow up on on after returning to London. I wish I could have stayed longer but had to shoot off to the CMO club. 

Pete Krainik, you spoiled us this year. So much talent and experience in one place.. where to start... I can’t believe I had the pleasure of listening to Raja from MasterCard not once but twice in 2 days.... Only in Cannes!

There are far too many members to mention and a full 6 hours of panels & talks, but the ones that made a big impression and left me wanting further discussion were..

• Words Matter: Leveraging AI for Creative and Content: George Aivazoglou, Eurosport, Daniel Cherry III, Activision Blizzard & Van Diamandakis, Persado
• Passion, Creativity and Courage to Be a Successful Leader: Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard and Arra Yerganian, Tivity Health. Arra, I loved your talk on organisations with purpose and would love to continue the conversation.
• Building and Scaling Your In-House Creative and Content Team: Aimée Lapic, Pandora, Simon Martin, Oliver, Giles Morrison, Unilever. A lot of what we do, as a mature start up, is in-house. I love the 'larger' pieces of work we work with agencies on but our in-house team are amazing. I hope we recognise them enough as we move at pace! One for me to keep front of mind..
• Successful CMOs Make Bold Moves: Karin Timpone, Marriott International, Greg Welch, Spencer Stuart. Really interesting to hear the journey that Marriott have been on bringing 30+ brands, franchises and loyalty programmes together.

I left the CMO Club with Terri & David from TrustX and headed off for dinner. Lots to talk about with 2 brands both fully focussed on and built on trust, privacy and security. Further discussions to come.

The night is coming alive as I walk along the front once more en route to my apartment, I, on the other hand am worn out from today so I head back and start to plan logistics with the intention of cramming as much as possible into my last day tomorrow...