PR needs Cannes just as much as Cannes needs PR

I went to a Cannes Lions evening at Hill Knowlton last week which was designed to promote the PR category of the Cannes Lions awards to the PR industry. It’s not PRmoments’ role to attempt to argue Cannes’ case, but the evening did get me thinking. My first thoughts are that PR probably needs these awards. Somehow the numerous domestic awards in the PR sector seem to fail to reward entries that most consumers have heard of. Whether this is because of a floored judging process or because the right campaigns are not entering is difficult to call, but either way, Cannes offers PR the opportunity to dine at the top table with the rest of the marcomms community. The reality is that Cannes has included a PR category because they believe public relations is an untapped category for them to increase their revenues. That said, the brand of Cannes is the most powerful in the marcomms sector, so this should be a win win relationship. It’s potentially a costly jolly; a 3 day pass for the 6 day event (Monday to Sunday, the PR awards is on the second night) costs 800 Euros per person. Most PR agencies may decide to go for the start of the week, meaning their stay includes the PR awards and the opening gala. Cost wise you’ve then got to add accommodation and travel, so it’s unlikely that the whole agency is going to up ship and move to Cannes for the week. If you are going, it’s worth attending either the opening or closing night galas. However, if you’ve got a choice go for the Friday night closing gala beach party. PRmoment understands that the opening gala is on the Tuesday night (although this might be moved to the Monday). In between these events there are various invite only parties run by the big ad agencies, so it’s wise to get invites lined up before you go. The final thing that comes to mind from the (H&K) evening was the requirement to highlight the benefits of any campaign entry with a video. While this is something that most award disciplines have been doing for some years, it’s a relatively new requirement for PR. In addition, entries should not only include media coverage value (yawn, yawn) but also an actual ROI value on the campaign. (e.g.: That the annual visitor target was hit during the 2 week period of the PR campaign and this was worth £x to the business).

A word of warning

The videos weren’t your average home editing fare; they were professionally produced and carefully thought out. So the days of rushing awards entries together on the deadline day may be over and, knowing the limited video producing capabilities of most PR firms, it may be worth a video production editor taking out an advert on PRmoment.com.