Cannes 2008: Same working Sunday. Different country

How do you take in eight straight sessions, each better than the other? And feel so high you don't need to visit Gutter Bar? Read on ... this was Sunday fare at Cannes.

 For true-blue professionals with media-plural mindsets, this is advertising manna. And there's more to come.
 Talking of advertising being an art, an inspiration and emotional and communication platform, the Blinkx session kept eyes wide open. Federico Grosso spoke of how 50% of consumers still use search engines to find online TV content. In an era of hyper-syndication, the Blinkx model still allows for advertising to be at the heart and soul of business, by contextual matching of advertising with relevant rich media.

 The Telstra Big Pond story amazes, as it does every year, for the nimble-footedness of a giant telco. Generating and aggregating content and serving it up across devices and platforms has been clearly the reason why actionable, contextual, useful, efficient and valuable targeting has been possible, resulting in market share, revenue and profitability increases in a virtuous cycle.

 Accenture swore by the logic that "you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star" by showing that measurable metrics could heighten creative impact. Through the ING Direct example and the stories of Trevor the Mentos intern and the Sven Goodsson "improve your karma" Motorola site, they proved that people were not creatures of logic but emotion and should be engaged with more intuitively.

The session on Digital Audio Broadcast taught how to Pimp Your Radio and turn every creative person into a DJ. With radio being the original social networker, original wireless device and original interactive medium, what more can be done? Well the possibilities unfolded in a brilliant plethora of branded programming and rich immersive content embellished with direct response, visual and GPS related add-ons.

 Design drives desire, said the Landor presentation header and the evolution of design to prevent the horrific truth of "the cycle of the similar" to become a problem solver using art, science, aesthetics and insight was a delight to watch. Preference and loyalty driven by design - and provably so!

 FEDMA sexed up DM with interesting examples and turning the hitherto horizontal line between ATL and BTL into a vertical one straddling brand, retention and acquisition. Also it advised us to "go where the consumer goes and do what the consumer does", begging us also to realise that direct entries win across all categories!

 Rapp Collins spoke of an attention economy crisis on our hands and turned the Value equation to a Values equation where brands stood for values and crusaded against conformity with value-based co-creation. Examples drawn from last year’s Lions underscored how Values are in, pretention is out.

 Go Viral, as always, enlightened while supporting arguments with thunderous statistics. Talking on the Always On consumer in more depth this year they drew a continuum of create-test-plan-distribute-evaluate-optimize as a way to tap consumers who were online to search-review-buy-affect. How do you optimize the digital consumer journey was the thought-provoker this year.

 Enough said ... need to stretch those legs and come right back ... to yet another manic Monday.

 Meera Sharath Chandra is President & National Creative Director, RMG Connect and was on the Clio, New York Fest, ADC and Chillies juries this year. She was on the One Show and Clio juries last year.