CADENT IS ONE FOR TV

We unified all of TV-linear, advanced, and fully addressable inventory-in a single platform to simplify buying and selling TV ads.

65MM Addressable Households, 100+ Data Partners,
200+ MVPD and Broadcast Station Group Relationships

We manage the complexities of the TV landscape.

You reap the benefits.
Learn more at cadent.tv

06/18/18

By Carita Rizzo

Cannes Lions kicked off today and Cynopsis was on the ground, weaving between Frosé carts and elaborate sponsored beach set-ups (Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, CNN and more all have their own spreads) to give you news about the latest in advertising from the Palais le Festivals and an exclusive Q&A with Nick Troiano, CEO of Cadent. Here are some highlights from the first day of panels.

In the news: Unilever announced it's cracking down on influencers who buy fake followers....P&G is bolstering its gender equality initiative with a video series with Katie Couric and TheSkimm.... Adobe unveiled an attribution tool, Attribution IQ, to help marketers determine how audiences are engaging with their advertising.

QUICK TAKES FROM CANNES….

P&G announced efforts aimed at supporting women in advertising, including signing the “Free The Bid” pledge, a promise that at least one woman director will be included among the final candidates to produce ads. P&G said it would also work with its biggest ad agency, Publicis Groupe SA, to double the reach of the program. “As the world’s greatest creative minds gather to celebrate creativity, we are committed to do our part with meaningful actions to advance gender equality in advertising, media and the creative pipeline in the next five years,” said P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard. “We also know no company can do it alone, so we hope to inspire others to be agents of change to accelerate momentum.”

Chris Chen, CCO of Isobar China Group, and Steven Li, CMO of Yum China, explained how KFC transformed their business to engage Chinese millennials – i.e. 78 million digital natives. A few years ago, what they were hearing from younger people was that KFC was a middle age brand in a middle age crisis. In response they launched the KFC Super App, which three years after its launch now serves 120 million members who can use it for ordering, payment, delivery, membership services etc. They have digitalized the ordering experience, so that the food waits for the customer, not the other way around. The order in-store is taken by a robot called Dumi, made in cooperation with Baidu, which recognizes accents and dialects from all over China. They also have facial recognition as a payment method, and customers can choose the background music of their choice using the BGM jukebox on their app. “It’s a better family experience through tech,” says Li. “Tech liberates the way of creative thinking.”

Brand Z’s Doreen Wang moderated a conversation about disruptive creativity, with Vineet Mehra, Global CMO of Ancestry, Emily Kraftman, Head of Marketing in the UK and Ireland for Deliveroo and Michael Austin, VP Americas of BYD. Kraftman defined disruptive creativity as single mindedness. “We want to feed people three times a day. It means you have to think disruptively, and as simply as possible,” she said. “The consumer is always a step ahead of you.” BYD is trying to disrupt existing energy providers by creating a sustainable eco system of renewable and affordable solar panels. “That’s what BYD is doing right,” says Austin. “Product disruption.” Austin cautions against becoming too comfortable in your success, though. “You need to recreate how you’re changing the world every couple of year,” he says. “If you don’t you’ll no longer be relevant. Technology changes fast.”

In panel with Michael Wolff, the author of the best seller, “Fire and Fury: Inside Trump’s White House”, talked about the difficulty of being a political journalist covering Trump. “Cause and effect have no place in Trump’s world. The moment is the moment and nothing else exist. As a political reporter, how do you cover that?” said Wolff. “The best way to look at it is through the reality TV show prism. What is reality TV? It is conflict, conflict, conflict. The more conflict a show has the more a show succeeds.” Fire and Fury is currently in the process of being adapted into a limited series by Jay Roach.

Accompanied by the theme of Beverly Hills Cop, Tahaab Rais and Naila Fattouh from FP7 in Dubai talked about why Hollywood stories are more effective than advertising. The duo said the conversation started with them being irked by the fact that your average person knows far more about films – even obscure ones – than advertising. But what makes a great film can also be used for ads. Film relies on story archetypes, often Campbell’s Monomyth, or The Hero’s Journey, where a hero is separated from his roots, goes on an adventure and returns home. Also, a story needs two strong elements (according to Aaron Sorkin): Intent and obstacles. Viewers want to figure things out, not be spoon fed, and they want a musical score that tells a story. “Tonality is not black or white,” said Fattouh. “It’s more engaging when emotions clash.”

One platform for buying and selling brilliant brand advertising.

End-to-end integration. Seamless workflow
Forecast cable, broadcast and addressable targets from a single workflow. Extend your budgets and increase the ROI of your advertising.
Unify your approach to planning, executing and measuring your brand campaigns.
CADENT IS ONE FOR TV.
Learn more at cadent.tv

Q&A WITH NICK TROIANO

Nick Troiano, CEO of Cadent, which uses data driven-solutions to connect brands with TV audiences across cable, broadcast, and digital media, looks forward to Cannes Lions every summer. “It's a great event in general for advertising and for the creative side, because great commercials create great results,” he says. “But what's really unique about it, is that the quality and level of attendees is really unbelievable. It's a unique opportunity to meet many of the top agency heads, and the top media players, from networks to agencies and also partners.” He’s not complaining about the surroundings of these annual meet-and-greets either. “It's a beautiful and a casual environment,” he tells us. “It's on the water, it's 80 degrees, and most of the folks that we see every day in suits and ties or in offices with no windows are outside actually enjoying sun and having great conversations about work.” We caught up with Troiano about the future of advertising and what excites him about the direction we are headed.

Advertising is going through interesting changes right now. Do you still see TV advertising as being effective?

Yes. A great commercial delivers the perfect result for an advertiser. It's engaging, it creates a certain response. That response could be brand loyalty or it could be changing a behavior. TV has obviously gone through a massive transformation in terms of media inflation, audience fragmentation and multi-platform viewing, but television in traditional sense - reaching consumers on a mass media - it's still a 70-billion-dollar industry. We think the change is actually great. It creates new opportunities. The use of technology and data, which obviously benefits Cadent, is creating great opportunities for what people call “new television,” or what the new TV environment should look like.

Are you thinking about linear programming or anything that you can watch on a screen?

Both, actually. From our perspective at Cadent, we touch both. Traditional linear television is still very, very powerful and is still going to be a powerful medium for advertisers, but at the same time, we all know that audiences are moving to other platforms.

Are you concerned about audience fragmentation?

From our perspective, our client really wants to reach the largest high-value audience or targeted audiences they can. Fragmentation creates a problem if those platforms and those audiences are not able to be reached in a consistent or simplistic way for an advertiser. But most of our business is based on making it simpler and easier for advertisers to buy audiences across any platform. That's where technology and automation come in. It's what we have thrived on over many years in terms of aggregating distributed supply and making it easier for advertisers to buy.

What excites you about the direction we're headed?

I think there is a tremendous amount of noise in the marketplace around the use of data, especially the use of data on television, and I think we're really excited about bringing a solution to the marketplace at scale that is a very compelling compliment to a large-scale digital strategy for an advertiser or a brand. Meaning, television is right now dominated by a traditional buying strategy based on existing legacy systems, but we all know that marketers are demanding better accountability, better optimization, better ROI. I'm excited because I think Cadent is uniquely positioned to bring data-driven capability to traditional television at scale now. Not in three years, but now.

What do you think is the future of advertising?

A lot of people talk about the use of data and platforms to deliver an ad to the right person at the right time, but they don't talk about the right ad to the right person at the right time. And the reason why they don't talk about the first piece – the right ad – is because creative still hasn't gotten there. That’s what I get very excited about: the ability to leverage all that great sight, sound and motion and creativity of advertising, but deliver it in a personalized message is certainly the future. And I think we see the benefits of it today, we just haven't gotten there yet with the technology.

TODAY’S GOLD WINNERS OF THE CANNES LIONS AWARDS: PHARMA HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Pharma Gold Prizes

“The Hearing Test in Disguise”
Cochlear Hearing Implants
CHE Proximity, Melbourne.

Revolver/Will O’Rourke Sydney

Australia

“Change Gout”
Grunenthal

Langland, Windsor
Jam3, Toronto

United Kingdom

Young Lions Health

#MeToon
Gerardo Saavedra, Felipa, Mexico City
Emiliano Salmon, Felipa, Mexico City

Health and Wellness

“Project 84”

Calm
adam&eveDDB, London
W Communications, London
UK

“Prescribed to Death”
National Safety Council

Energy BBDO, Chicago
PHD, Chicago
Ketchum, New York
m ss ng p eces, New York

USA

“Imaginary Friend Society”
Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation
RPA, Santa Monica
USA

“Sip Safe”
Monash University
Y&R Melbourne

Australia

“Black Supermarket”
Carrefour

Marcel, Paris
Prodigious/Iconoclast/Nightshift/Gum/DMBM, Paris
France

Grand Prix:

“Corazon – Give Your Heart”
Montefiore/Organ Donation
John X Hannes, New York
Serial Pictures/Exile Editorial, New York/Active Theory

Barking Owl, Los Angeles/A52 Santa Monica

USA

Lions Health United Nations Grand Prix for Good

“Blink to Speak”
Asha Ek Hope Foundation
TBWA/India, Mumbai
India

Healthcare Agency of the Year

Havas Lynx Manchester

Healthcare Network of the Year

FCB Health

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Work like you don’t need your job. If you work in fear of losing your job you won’t disrupt. If you’re disruptive, someone will hire you – I will hire you,” Vineet Mehra, Global CMO of Ancestry.com

TOMORROW AT CANNES LIONS

Business is only picking up on the second day of Lions. Panels include what’s coming next in branded consumer experience and how diversity is both a values issue and business imperative. We’ll hear how AI and VR will shape the future of Hollywood and about data driven creativity as the new innovation model. Be sure to set your dial to Cynopsis!

Lynn Leahey
Editorial Director
@Lynn_Leahey