Lose control and gain the initiative, said Nick Moore, executive vice-president and chief creative officer, Wunderman, in a seminar titled “Don’t Create An Ad, Start A Conversation” at Cannes. The imperative is to lead a conversation by asking the right questions, by taking the conversation to the next step, he was reported as having said by the Lions Daily News website that covers happenings in Cannes. After seeing two to three commercials, a viewer may check the company’s site within a few days. That is a conversation, according to Moore.

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Lions Daily News quotes Rodney Fitch, president of the inaugural Design jury at Cannes, as saying: “Design is not always about overt selling and marketing, and there is quite a lot of social content and cultural content in this category that you don’t always find in other categories. One of our criteria is what we have called engagement. On the one hand, it could be engaged with the selling message, on the other, it could be in the cultural message. One programme we have seen has nothing to do with selling but about placing cultural objects in the environment. Being shown alongside the other categories in Cannes puts Design in a context in which it is not usually seen, it places a new spotlight on their work and ours.”

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Marcio Salem, president of this year’s Direct Lions, is quoted as saying that creativity should not be curbed in direct marketing: “Digital technology is influencing a lot of our world, which means we’ll be seeing many more multimedia campaigns ...Great campaigns should still be based on simple ideas, beautifully executed.”

Compiled by Marion Arathoon.