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Cannes – Day 4 Takeouts

A Fireside Chat with Daniel Ek, Founder & CEO, Spotify. Hosted By: Spotify

Key takeout – Spotify see’s itself as a behavioural data platform…. They want to deliver personalised content in a world of infinite choice. The big challenge at the strt was to convince a traditional industry to give away their product for free so that ultimately their revenues could grow.  Can just see the CFO getting their head around that….. Currently 2 million artists, 40 million songs, 100 million active users, 30 million paid subscribers, $2.2b revenue of the $17b industry – so good market share.  30,000 new tracks uploaded every day. the product is being built in to new car models and a whole eco-system of industry evolves around helping artists function.

The behavioural data piece – as demonstration of how powerful the data is – Metallica use the Spotify listening habits of their fans in specific cities to determine the set list for their gigs when they play there…

The Future of Brands

The Future of Brands. Hosted By: Unilever

Interesting presentation by a gregarious CMO Keith Weed @keithweed

Key takeout – their marketing focus is across three ‘I’s”.  Individuals. Influencers. Impacts.
His role is 2 tiered – Chief Macro Officer – all the broad based communications for brands and products and as Chief Micro Officer – engaging in language, culture, segments in real time.  Their goal is to have a relationship with a billion people – so the macro / micro balance is paramount.  Lots of video – heartstrings,big brand ambition.

Anderson Cooper & Anthony Bourdain:

Anderson Cooper & Anthony Bourdain: Creative Inspiration. Hosted By: Time Warner
Two friends having a random conversation…. Never watched either in their day job, so now might do it once.
Key takeout – authenticity.

Bourdain has a brash position and vision that he knows exactly what he wants and exactly how he wants it shared.  He recently had an episode where he had a meal a meal with President Obama in a noodle joint in Hanoi. Its what he wanted and controlled the process to get it.  Single minded outcome focus. Stories then built around this focus.Considers video to be a great form for essayists. He sums himself up as “self indulgent without being arrogant”

Predestination

Predestination: Wired’s Kevin Kelly on Where We Are All Heading. Hosted By: PHD Worldwide
If Google’s telepathy dimension is realised we could predict through “sensing” the long term future. The concept is micro computers inserted into our bodies that provide significant data into our “operating system”.

Key take out – the most influential and transformative process we fave is “Virtuality”.

This is a topic over hyped at a consumer level however under hyped for our long term future. The next platforms will evolve to Immersive VR and Presence MR (mixed reality). Current “swivel” VR will evolve to Roaming VR to provide a greater total experience. Difficult to deliver but that isnt / shouldnt be the hurdle. A “felt” experience will make VR significantly more effective.

Inside the Innovators Mindset

Inside the Innovator’s Mindset. Hosted By: Forbes Media
Two entrepreneurs who feature on the Global Forbes 30 Under 30. One was an eBay power seller at 12 – now runs MikMak which is changing the Infomercial.

The other an operating sculptor at 9 who now creates jewellery that has health benefits…
Key takeout – Thinking like a disruptor is based on a process – cannot be successful if it is random.
The process should focus on finding things that people are overlooking (where solutions become apparent – how about that for a name!) Successful disruptors are intrepreneurs as well as entrepreneurs – and are built from teams with eclectic and complementary skills where interdisciplinary thinking comes together to create unique and interesting outcomes. They talked about frictionless creativity where available open source solutions allow reducing reinvention and focus on outcomes and outputs as test environments.

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