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FEDMA in Cannes: Converging brand and direct to kick butt in a down economy

This week FEDMA attended the International Advertising Festival, Cannes Lions, and here is a quick update on how things went.
 
FEDMA was one of the first to present the prestigious seminars and we brought with us Richard Rosen, President, CEO – ROSEN, to talk about convergence between brand and direct. The seminar attracted around 150 direct and interactive marketers and was really well received.
2009-06-23

This week FEDMA attended the International Advertising Festival, Cannes Lions, and here is a quick update on how things went.

FEDMA was one of the first to present the prestigious seminars and we brought with us Richard Rosen, President, CEO – ROSEN and Øystein Svarød, MD Svarød Direct, to talk about FEDMA, and the convergence between brand and direct. The seminar attracted around 150 direct and interactive marketers and was really well received.

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Richard explained the whole concept of convergence in a very effective and practical way. Through a wide range of good examples, the participants were shown how to find an easy path to balance brand and direct by choosing the level (1-10) of interaction points the consumer can interact with you. His velocity scale is the core of his presentation and it is easy to understand. What is not so simple, he pointed out, is to understand the concept of the different disciplines within branding and direct, and to know your (potential) customers well enough to decide how to chose the balance between brand and direct – often it also depends on what kind of product you are offering.
 
Richard and Øystein did a great job in promoting FEDMA and the industry as a whole and we are most grateful to them. Many thanks also to Sony DADC eBridge who sponsored the event.

 
Sony DADC eBridge held a workshop on Monday and they managed to fill the room up to the rim with direct marketers all interested in learning more about bridging offline and online media. Sony brought in two of their clients; Google and Mercedes, who both gave excellent presentations on how eBridge had helped them reach their targets.
 
What I personally like the most about this workshop was the interaction between the audience and the presenters and between the audience itself. Sony did a great job in keeping it all together.
 
Mercedes reported that from having only a hand full of email addresses from a target group of more than 80000 of their customers in the Netherlands, they increased this to more than 6500 – all opt-ins. Taking into account that they only had 300 email addresses to start with it is pretty impressive. In addition to that they reported that 19% opened the mail packs and during the campaign period they had 12500 visits. Google reported that they had an 11% response rate for a campaign done in France which is also very good.
 
Overall FEDMA has done well in Cannes, and what is even more positive is that the Direct marketing industry is again very strong in Cannes with more than 1300 entries for the Cannes Lions Direct competition.
 
Talking about awards; Europe did quite well in terms of the winners; with Portugal leading the way with some really remarkable campaigns (even with a dog on the team), closely followed by Belgium and Spain. The Grand Prix, went to Australia for their “best job in the world” campaign (which also won the PR gold).
 
We also attended the Twitter / Hill and Knowlton seminar which was most interesting. After the CMO of Twitter had done his 25 minutes presentation (very informative and laid back), he answered plenty of questions posted online in realtime from the audience one of which I'd like to share with you: “if you were given a billion dollars for Twitter today what would you have done?” to which he replied; “Mmm, I can see there is only 30 seconds left of the slot so I might wait this one out (Cannes Lions is very strict about timing), but I would like to say this: We are in the phase in developing the business, capitalising it and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone to let it go out of our hands at this point”.
  
At the award ceremony, the 56th of its kind, Philip Thomas, the CEO of Cannes Lions, pointed out that many things have changed with the festival like the numbers of attendees, but many things haven’t like the energy and buzz surrounding the festival. He also pointed out that the people who have attended Cannes Lions this year are there for all the good reasons: to visit the exhibitions, to attend the seminars, and to participate in the workshops; He also said that “those who are just out for some drinks at the bars, and some hours in the sun, have stayed home." He also congratulated a person, who is often referred to as the father of Direct marketing, Mr. Lester Wunderman, who celebrated his birthday at the Direct marketing award ceremony.
 
There will be plenty of videos of the event posted on the FEDMA website shortly so please make sure to visit it frequently over the next few days. You can also check out the Cannes daily news here!
 
For any questions or comments please contact Jorgen.