At Cannes, nothing will ever be the same as it was the year before–not as it pertains to the work.  Each jury breathes its own character into the Festival.  It is for this reason that you can’t take to the bank what you learned from past winners to try to figure out what will win the very next year.

What will be the same?  No tables after Wednesday on the Carlton terrace.  No tried and true gurus.  No real agreement on who has “the” solution as to where the “industry” is headed.  Yes, there are solutions (3rd screen , 2nd screen, whatever).  Yes, there are possible icons (Bogusky and his non-statement, statement haircut is moving up on the inside).  And happily, yes, there are fewer whistles of disdain blown out every time American work did well.

In terms of you winning next year, don’t hold back because if you think you can’t win, you might.  And if you think you must win, you won’t.

Final thought on DM.  I really do think everything is becoming DM.  It’ all segmented.  The creativity in segmented marketing is incredible at Cannes.  And it’s coming from many.  It’s coming from all places.  In all languages and flavors.  And it’s coming without excuses and no past baggage or useless rules.  Step up and win on your terms next year.  With any luck, I’ll see you there.

-Lor Gold, Chief Creative Officer, Rivet

The keynote luncheon at the DMA’s DM Days conference and exhibition could have been better.
 
In fact DM News’ editor-in-chief said, “The only good thing that came out of the keynote was the chicken.

Today began the first major day at the Internet Retailer Conference in San Jose and it has drawn the masses.  The sessions have been very full, which is pretty impressive in a room that probably holds a thousand people.  Jim McCann from 1-800-flowers.com gave a very good keynote, full of colorful anecdotes about running a small family flower shop in Manhattan in the 70s.  His customers would sit around the store on ratty director’s chairs and give opinions on his flower arranging and if his uncle wanted to come for Thanksgiving dinner during the busy season, he had to help with deliveries on Wednesday beforehand.

The show floor seemed quiet whenever I wandered it, but the exhibiting vendors assured me that traffic was good.  UPS was selling a returns option, something worthwhile to all of the online retailers out there, and Junction Solutions said that they had inquires about all of their products, not just their e-commerce platform.  MyBuys was showing off its updated version of its RSS, e-mail and e-commerce analytics platform that is rich with behavioral targeting.
Lunch was hosted by Accretive Commerce, who presented its platform and announced new partnerships with Allurent, LiquidPixels and CyberSource.  But the presentation was really just background noise to the mingling. I ate with Kevin Magnuson CEO or online sports store M.U.D.U. Sports and Nicki Hayes at Memolink.  Mr. Magnuson noted how many e-commerce vendors he met that didn’t have booths, but were just wandering the show.  Ms. Hayes was one such vendor.  Both were enjoying the sessions, though our lunchtime chatter didn’t let us get very into Foresee’s naming of the top retailers.  It was to be expected, Apple.com, Amazon.com and Netflix.com were names I heard when I looked up from my salad.
-Dianna Dilworth