Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Almir Okanović, Chief Creative Director, BBDO Zagreb
There’s a common belief that the French speak bad English, or don’t speak it at all. And although such prejudices are usually incorrect, this one is not. The Gallic roosters, in fact, still prefer to crow in their mother tongue. For Luka and me, two English-speaking guys, this definitely presents an issue. So we decided it would be prudent to learn the language of the natives a bit better, we are in Cannes after all. We started with “au revoir” because we needed something to mutter on the way out of the cab. But the French diphthongs (diphthong = two vowels pronounced in an articular movement) proved to be a nightmare for us. Our compatriots from Dubrovnik would undoubtedly fare much better than us here. Their “oa” diphthong would fit excellently here. After all, everyone knows that the linguistic genesis of the term “croissant” begins with a man from Dubrovnik and his remark to a Napoleonic soldier after he tried this unusual French pastry, saying it was “kroasan” (the misspelled and mispronounced word ‘krasan’, which means great, beautiful).
Anyway, regarding the festival … The third day finally brought us a bit of sun and heat. It was an excellent opportunity for the advertising pilgrims to throw on some linen shirts, sunglasses, short skirts, and for the local seagulls to ride out of their stables on their prancing horses, raging bulls and other fauna on four wheels.
Anyway, regarding the festival … As an eternal copywriter at heart, I wondered what the youngster by the name of Jimmy Maymann would have to say about the future of storytelling.
As soon as we sat down in the Claude Debussy Theater, Jimmy went into action. The man had put in a great deal of effort to learn his entire lecture by heart, all 6000 sentences. Luke folded his arms (the first indication that he was not tense), and I – after I woke up – I thought that it would make more sense if Jimmy had named his lecture “Neverending storytelling”? Or even simpler, “Storykilling”?
FROM NARCOLEPSY TO BOSNIAN DISHES
We concluded that this was the festival’s strategy – to put the most interesting and most attractive events and lectures on the first day of the festival (Friday), then on one day in the middle (Tuesday), and on the last day (Friday), to motivate guests to stay (and pay) for the entire 8 days. The next lecture was a “must not miss”. Socializing with Carl Addy, creative director of the best and most creative production company in the world, The Mill – that’s something you don’t miss. In his interesting presentation, called Situation Normal, All Fucked Up, in which he effectively illustrated, using his own projects, that the state of creativity is in fact a state of creative chaos, stress and discomfort, and constant improvisation. From my own experience, I couldn’t agree more.
After the exciting stress and chaos of Carl’s lecture, it was time again to catch some shuteye. This was possible thanks to the lecture: Why dynamism is the new creativity? hosted by IPG Mediabrands. What the guests had to say about this – and one of them was the creative director of Droga5 – I will never know. Somehow the concept of one moderator and two interlocutors who sit and talk with each other as if the 300 people in the audience aren’t there, failed to intrigue me… in spite of the tremendous “dynamism” in the title of the event.
After feeling Luka’s elbow nudge once more, we set off on a new, potentially more interesting adventure in the form of a discussion called: Will drone and 360 video change the future of advertising? The form of the presentation: one moderator, two speakers and three armchairs. Zzzzzzzzzz …
All this excitement made us very hungry very quickly, so we went into the first restaurant that we came across. The young waitress who brought us our food on a platter, having heard our loud babbling, jumped in with a “dialect” well known to us: Momci, a što ćete popiti? (What’ll you have boys?) Dijana, the child of Sarajevans, although born in France, excellently used her endlessly cute and sweet combination of Bosnian and French speech. It seems that Balkan people, when they’re somewhere abroad, always have a great ability to ‘smell’ each other. I suppose it’s also because it’s always pleasing to hear a familiar language, even in this unusual form. Otherwise, foreign waiters in Cannes are mainly from Belgium, Germany, Britain and the US. The same, however, is not true for the taxi drivers. That day we were driven to the hotel by Uber driver Miroslav, a Serb who has lived in France for a long time. The man says he studied to become a priest, but in the end decided in favor of the taxi service. And so the sympathetic Miroslav kept us awake with his “taxi” stories and conspiracy theories that would make even Mel Gibson’s character from the Conspiracy Theory green with envy.
NOTHING WAKES YOU UP LIKE A GOOD POSTER AND CANNES COFFEE
On our return to the festival building in the evening hours, we watched the awarding of the Lions, and attended the official opening Gala. Although we will not disclose the laureates at this time, what was particularly interesting for us were the posters and prints for the humanitarian and socially responsible campaigns. Not only because of the good ideas and insight, but primarily because of the art directoring, which is the canker of Croatian advertising. We could only silently walk down the hall that showcased the finalists in the category and admire the art, visual style and perfectionism that some of the works radiated. The next morning we ordered a coffee in a fancy coffee shop across from the Debussy Theater to recapitulate the previous day, and to practice our French:
- Did you see that poster for the fight against domestic violence? What did you think?
- Fantastique!
- And what do you think about those posters for aiding the homeless?
- Genial!
- And what about the print with the visuals of a boy with spikes on his body?
- Formidable!
At that point the waiter came with the bill: two coffees with milk and one sparkling water = €14.
- Merde!
(Almir Okanović, Chief Creative Director, BBDO Zagreb)
