Hasta La Creative!

McCann New York’s “Fearless Girl” came into Cannes a heavy favorite and the female-empowerment campaign lived up to expectations on Monday, taking home the first three Grand Prix awards handed out in the morning.

The campaign for State Street Global advisers — which involved putting a bronze statue of a girl standing defiantly across from the iconic Wall Street charging bull – took home the top awards in the PR, Glass and Nontraditional Outdoor categories. “It’s hard to beat three out of three,” said DDB North American CEO Wendy Clark, president of the jury for the Glass Lion, adding that it “gripped the world’s attention.”

Below, a look at why the jurors thought “Fearless Girl” stared down the competition in the trio of categories.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

After a week of controversy, chicanery and the sort of reflexive hand-wringing that accompanies any event that provides the media with an excuse to gaze anxiously into the depths of its own navel, Megyn Kelly’s much-ballyhooed interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones turned out to be a dud.

According to Nielsen fast affiliate ratings, last night’s broadcast of NBC’s “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly” averaged just 3.53 million viewers and a 0.7 rating in the core news demo, which translates to around 841,000 people 25 to 54. That marks the lowest turnout for Kelly’s newly-minuted newsmagazine program, which debuted on June 4.

To put the ratings for Sunday night’s broadcast in context, the demographically relevant audience for the Jones interview was 30% smaller than that which turned up in the same hour for a repeat of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on ABC.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Watching and re-watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail dozens of times in middle school taught us two things: the English have terrible hygiene and French people talk funny.

Publicis Groupe’s first Cannes Lions video under its new leader Arthur Sadoun makes pretty much the same joke: he talks like a Frenchman, ha ha ha.

Bonjour! Baguette! Jacques Coustaeu!
Oh oui oui, who doesn’t like some light-hearted fun at the expense of consultants dressed like they just finished hosting a Vice segment on kids who turn abandoned Midwestern malls into skate parks?

Yeah ok. But what is “break bond build,” which we keep wanting to call Triple B?

Sadoun spoke to The Wall Street Journal to elaborate on what he plans to do atop Publicis.

His take on the biggest challenge facing ad agencies:

If the industry does not bring back growth to our clients’ business, we will be in danger. We have to overcome the fragmentation that now makes marketing splintered. We must be delivering expertise in technology and data and think very broadly about creativity.

That reads a lot like an even greater focus on media and ad buying than creative work. Someone got the Sorrell memo.

Sadoun did acknowledge that ROI for Publicis’ acquisition of Sapient has been disappointing due to “us underestimating how difficult it is to get technologists and marketing working together.”

He also predicted, somewhat ominously, that the ad industry will see more changes in the next 5 years than it has over the past 20.

But creative storytelling is still the single key to success in advertising, right? Right?? Gerard Depardieu?!?

The authorities will deliver reports to the government on Tuesday on whether the American conglomerate should be allowed to buy Sky, a satellite giant.