Cannes 2008: JMD and Rupert Murdoch

In an age where small is considered beautiful, and being big seems something to be apologetic about, TBWA Worldwide chairman Jean Marie Dru (pictured) embraced the power of big. Day Five of the Cannes Lions 2008 festival had the legendary adman talking about advertising creativity and how it was most of the big brands that allowed creatives to push the boundaries.
Dru, who has been to the Cannes festival for the last 36 years said that a few years ago, none of the big brands like P&G and Unilever cared about Cannes, these brands did not have the reputation for awards. Last year, when both won the Grand Prix, it marked an important turning point for the industry, these brands understood that creativity was not an option anymore, it was a vital element of everything that brands needed to do, to resonate with consumers. Quoting his partner, Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer, TBWA Worldwide, Dru said, “Big ideas work, good ads don’t.”
Citing the example of big brands like Apple, Pedigree and Nissan, Dru said that all these brands had basic ideas that could be expressed across multiple mediums.  Big brands, Dru added, had legitimacy to do stuff that smaller brands might not be able to get away with.  Citing the example of Apple, Dru  explained how this was one brand which was, as Steve Jobs had described it, “the biggest small company in the world.” He said that Apple was the kind of brand that could behave like a leader when it needed to and still stay true to its small roots when it was required to.
It was interesting to see that Dru’s support of the power of big ideas was backed by one simple fact: All the most heavily attended ‘full house’ session came from big brands like Nike, Newscorp, Coca Cola: at the festival, it was undoubtedly the big brands that people wanted to see, feel and touch.
Wieden+Kennedy and Coca Cola’s session on life beyond Happiness Factory looked at explaining what Coca Cola and W+K at the moment were working towards to sustain the campaign. Ivan Wicksteed, global creative director, Coca Cola said that given the tremendous success of the Happiness Factory, it was Coke’s long term aspiration to see whether they could get users to pay to be a part of the story and that if they did, they would know that the story had been well told.  
Y&R’s chat with Rupert Murdoch, Newscorp chairman and CEO and Peter Chernin, president and COO, Newscorp saw yet another packed seminar hall. Citing the Wall Street Journal buy as the most terrific opportunity, Murdoch said that it was not just the WSJ brand but the entire Dow Jones company brand which formed part of the huge deal. Chernin pointed out that a vast amount of financial information is moving towards the mobile and as such it was an exploding marketplace. Asked whether there had been any unexpected surprises after he acquired the company and Murdoch said he was taken aback by the cooperation extended to him by the editorial team at WSJ, inspite of all the press reports that suggested there was intense opposition to his acquiring the company. Murdoch said that given the economic recession taking place in developed markets like USA, it would be the developing economies that would see tremendous growth in the coming years. This included India.
Speaking about his MySpace acquisition, Murdoch said that Facebook had a great six months last year, and nothing motivated them like competition which was performing well. It helped them to increase their pace of innovation that was far greater, when faced with such a competitive rival.
Murdoch said that developing markets including India would continue to see investments as countries that were seeing a good GDP growth as well as good advertising growth would be critical markets for them to be present in.
Friday will see the Cannes Debate take place as WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell takes part in the discussion around the topic of brands using online to build brand value. Others part of the debate include AOL’s Ron Grant, Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson, Yahoo!’s Hilary Schneider and Google’s Henrique de Castro. Also Crispin Porter & Bogusky will talk about the power of the story.