OK, day one at the Cannes Lions Ad festival. well, almost day one. Night one is more like it.

a favorite watering hole, soon to be overrun by ad folk.

You don’t have to work in advertising to know that the ad industry has been affected by the “new” economy, like every one else.
But advertising is a major engine in the stimulation of the money flow, but messaging has been changing so fast, it’s tough to keep up, on a relevant basis.

Smart, entrepreneurial photographer, stands in front of the famed Carlton Hotel, snaps your photo, edits it, prints it, and hands it too you in a cardboard frame, All from the back of his motorcycle. Gotta hand it to him for marketing.

And as long as we live in a society that makes products, and gets them to market, the public has to know that the product is available.
The Cannes Lions is the biggest and most prestigious festival celebrating the ad work of the past year, and now, holding seminars and workshops with some of the greatest global minds in the business. And just in general.
By gathering these minds together, perhaps there will be a piece of the puzzle in the economic next steps.
Whether you believe it or not, advertising is a pretty big engine when it comes to stimulating the economy.
And not just the economy. How about the historic election in the USA, last November?
This year, the leader of the Obama campaign will speak and if you don’t think that was some of the best marketing this past year, you need to take a closer look.
Using all of the social networking and technology available, including the famous Shepard Fairy poster of the AP photogs shot of Obama, to twitter feeds and Facebook groups.
And speaking of Facebook, how about the Whopper Sacrifice campaign, where for every 10 friends you delete you got a free whopper.
Even FB didn’t know how to deal with it, till they shut it down. But the point was made. The media coverage of the ensuing removal of the offer, gave much more exposure to the campaign than it ever had.

And what about he photo industry ? Microsites and stock houses took it in the shorts, meaning so did a lot of you who may depend on stock photo sales for income.
Getty even made a deal with Flickr to sell your photos through them via Flickr.
Because the advertising community wants more authentic photographs. Kinda like the ones most people take everyday.
And if you cruise through Flickr you’ll see some incredible work.

After over 10 years of attendance here, we have seen the wretched excess and now we’ll see the tighter, smarter business mode. We think.
So here we are looking talking shooting, videoing, and bringing you some perspective from the biggest a festival of them all. The Cannes Lions 2009.

And just for the record, we pick the Obama campaign for the Grand Prix. When you can change history with he help of strong, smart, innovative, current, marketing it seem to be worthy of the biggest prize.

Even the taxi driver from the airport commented on President Obama. Now that’s some strong branding!