Cannes Day 6

Today I went to the forum “Selling Sustainability – Are we there yet?” hosted by Y&R and Wunderman.  They discussed a consumer group they called the aspirationals – a group composed mainly of millennials, the generation I am part of. Aspirationals enjoy consumption and convenience, but they also take sustainability of a brand, either socially or environmentally, into account. If they are offered two products of similar cost they will, without a doubt, pick the sustainable brand, and they will be proud of it. The talk went on to say that “sustainability needs to be a force, not a fad” and that brands should promote the sustainable efforts they make.  As the media tends to only pick up on negative practices of brands they should try to be transparent and show the sustainable efforts they are making. 

At the end a very relevant question was asked: Will sustainability ever be more important than price?  They said it should be and would be because if a product is sustainable it’s actually worth more in the long run so it should be valued at a higher price.  There are a number of problems with this theory – primarily that the cheaper thing will often win out anyways because the majority of the world doesn’t have that extra money to spare.  Sustainable products have to be developed in way that they can be sold cheaply. Otherwise, they will only be used by the upper class. Sustainability has to be cheap or it will in fact just be a fad among wealthy consumers. Large brands with a lot of leverage should work to make sustainable products cheap enough to be priced competitively to regular products.

After this I got sucked into the screening room for the film ads again.  I love it and I hate it. When I watch a recorded TV I will usually watch one of the commercial breaks.  But watching ad, after ad, after ad is really enough to make me tear my hair out. Perhaps it’s because they’re so short, but I think it may be because they’re all so intense.  It made me reevaluate what I like in an ad. A calmer ad might actually work more effectively because it is a break from the stream of fast consumption.

After that I went to a seminar hosted by Burberry and Google where they showcased and compared the work they did that they felt pushed the creative bracket. It was interesting to see how both of these brands try to mesh the digital with the physical world.