Speaking with Heinz about Beanz in Cannez. A salesperson's guide to navigating the Cannes Lions Festival.

I'm heading to Cannes next month. Naturally, I'll be looking to source meetings whilst there, to take part in our programming at BENlabs AI hub, and to generally let my hair down each evening.

The headline however is based on a true experience.?

I once got to attend the Cannes Lions Festival purely on the strength of a single meeting with Kraft Heinz.

The story starts when as one of the senior London team working for an American organisation, I’d originally been selected and slated to spend a week on the Cote d’Azur. This, as a committed oenophile, was an inspiring prospect on multiple levels, and one I was hugely looking forward to from both a professional and personal perspective.

Then around ten days out from festival week I got unceremoniously bumped.?We’d run a competition in the US which rewarded the salesperson who generated the most leads the previous month with a seat on the plane to Southern France.?The problem now was that the ill-thought-out competition had resulted in a tie.

Our then head of global sales, balked at making a tough decision, deciding instead to allocate both winners with a golden ticket across the Atlantic, so like the Augustus Gloop and Verruca Salt of the advertising world, they got to attend the gallic sunshine spectacular, whilst I spent the week in a bijou fourth-floor office staring at a largely overcast south London vista and cursing my luck.?No amount of Proven?al rosé was going to wash away my distaste.

Then, on the Friday before the annual migration was due to commence, I received news that I was needed after all.?We were all set to meet with some of the leadership at Kraft Heinz, and we didn’t have enough Europeans attending. The company wanted me to be there.?Hallelujah! There was a God after all.

Excitedly, I confirmed that I’d be in like Flynn.?Tell me when to be there and where I’d be staying.?Sunscreen was being dug out, linens were being readied.

The trouble was, of course, that we had no spare accommodation, and good luck finding any at late notice for less than a King’s ransom. Rather than a sojourn of any notable duration, this would need to be undertaken as a day trip. A day trip with an early start out of London, and a late return.?On a Friday.

You see, the Kraft Heinz meeting was scheduled for Friday afternoon when the parties were all done and dusted, and when each of the beach set-ups were being unceremoniously dismantled. Google Beach had become Goo Be, Facebook had left only a trace of Fa. Lots of sun-scorched deconstruction workers, less of the global creative and media set. You catch my drift.

Cannes is simply not a healthy place on Festival Friday.?It is populated by the remnants of a broken people. The laggards of a tribe eagerly waiting for their flight home whilst they nurse their fourth consecutive hangover, a feint stench of stale alcohol permeating sweaty pores.

Regardless, we had to pitch.

On the contrary, however, the recipients of our pitch really didn’t have to listen.?They too were broken.?Tired, drained, overloaded with messaging, and wanting to be elsewhere.?It was like I’d gate-crashed a Zombie’s birthday bash and nobody had even noticed I was there,?

The highlight of my day? One person genuinely fell asleep.

So, that was my Cannes experience that year. Maybe this was a ramble, but there is a pay off if you stuck the distance and I finally get to the point of my post, “A Salesperson's Guide to Navigating the Cannes Lions Festival”. It's a simple message.

Get your best work in early.?You’ll thank me for it.