Narve Thakrar’s Cannes Diary #3
Narve Thakrar, managing partner at DDB Remedy represented Australia on the Cannes Pharma Lions jury. Thakrar, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors writes exclusively for CB.
Day erm – not quite sure?
The last couple of days have been a whirlwind – an overwhelming combination of talks, events, final jury commitments, work and walking. I’ve been hitting 20,000 to 25,000 steps each day.
The sheer scale of the Lions is evident as everyone has arrived now. Hot tip for any newbies coming to Cannes in the future – make sure you’ve lined up every single event, party and/or anything else you want to do ahead of time. Once you hit the ground, it’s almost impossible to get to everything or, indeed, get access to some parts of the festival.
For some of the most popular talks, the queues can be quite significant, so get there early if you want a guaranteed spot.
There have been so many highlights over the last few days and I’m loath to leave things out, but with brevity in mind, some of the best bits have included:
• Darryl DMC McDaniels sharing his message in support of Hip Hop Public Health
• will.i.am launching his new AI-based app and using it to develop a new rhyme
• Spending quite a bit of time at Meta beach – playing around with Quest, increasing my knowledge of reels and other short-form video content and getting a quick shout-out to DDB Remedy via the WhatsApp Concierge.
• “The Real Beauty of Long-Lasting Brands” session by Unilever
This was a really emotionally charged session, and pretty much everyone had tears in their eyes after seeing the recent work for Dove. If you haven’t seen it, check it out below:
• Google’s session on the responsible use of AI. Obviously, AI has been a massive theme during the whole event, but it’s moving so fast that what we hear today will have changed tomorrow.
I also got to say goodbye to my jury mates who have headed off in various directions.
My time in Cannes is coming to an end in two days, so I plan to make the most of what’s left, starting with the Prompt event tonight.
