Michael Swinburn’s Cannes Diary #1

(Michael Swinburn with his former boss Beth O’Brien, head of innovation at The Monkeys)

Michael Swinburn, senior copywriter at Colenso BBDO is on the ground in Cannes. Swinburn reports exclusively for Campaign Brief.

I would’ve considered it an honour to be Colenso’s sole representative in Cannes, if not for the crippling inevitability that I’ll say something controversial, to someone important – as soon as my blood alcohol level registers 2.1 glasses of rosé.

But the show goes on.

Sometimes I see these reports feature a form of witty complaint regarding jetlag, a neighbouring plane passenger, or an awful combination of sunburn and hangover. As if it’s not an incredible privilege to be sent, and paid, to learn from the world’s best creatives, in one of the world’s most beautiful places, while expensing the world’s most delicious food. Albeit, sunburnt.

Here’s an inspiring sentence I heard today that might justify you reading this far.

“I know you’re all worried about machines becoming more like humans. I think we should be more worried about humans becoming more like machines.”
– Nick Law, Accenture Song.

Inspiring stuff.

While we’re on the topic of AI, I challenged myself to show up at a talk that I’m not interested in, just to mess up my personal algorithm. Naturally, I went to one dedicated to cinema advertising. Turns out they now have ‘AI emotion recognition technology’ that can measure the facial expressions of everyone in a cinema as they watch your ad, and then tell you exactly how an audience is emotionally reacting to it in real time. THEN, it can recommend how you would re-cut it to achieve the perfect emotional story arc.

Bonkers.

See you tomorrow.

Swinny xx