Each year News Corp runs a Young Lions Competition as part of the 63rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – with three winning teams scoring flights and tickets to the event in France,
The winning duo from the media industry were Nelson Demartini and Roisin Rafferty from UM and Carat in Queensland.
It’s entirely likely that this is not the first article you’ve read about Snapchat on your Monday morning. The cult-like app seems to be taking over the world and driving marketers crazy as we scramble to find the most innovative way to use the platform to reach the ‘ever elusive millennials’ - and the even more mysterious Gen Zs. So far, Snapchat’s presence at Cannes is unmissable, with the signature white and yellow ghost covering a five-story wall on the beachside facing window of the Palais (I’ll make sure to Snap about it tomorrow).
There is no better week to be following your colleagues on Snapchat; Yacht parties, Will Smith, croissants and ice cold rosé all with the benefit of that annoyingly cute dog lens and the geo filter that doesn’t let you forget that they are in fact in the south of France. On second thoughts, might be a better idea to avoid their snap-story for the week...
With all this being said, I realised pretty quickly that I had the hard task of converting some of my fellow Aussies onto the awesomeness that is Snapchat. The story begins here…
We met fellow Aussies Nic and Roger from News Corp for lunch and debrief on all things Day One. Rog and I were the only two who were well and truly on the Snap-wagon so we spent a good 30 minutes convincing the others why they should be too. Here are our top three arguments for anyone yet to take the plunge into the Snap-world.
1: The content doesn’t have to be any good
The best thing about Snapchat is that by its very nature taking a good picture is rare so there is very little pressure to produce good quality content. This isn’t Instagram so there is no need to curate what does and doesn’t make it onto your story. See below an example of the D-grade images featured on my story today. Orientation? Inconsistent. Lighting? Poor. Composition? Non-existent.
2. It’s really funny to zoom in on people’s faces
Both Rog and I agreed that one of the best things to do on Snapchat was to sneakily zoom in on people’s faces. Riveting right? Example of this very mature activity below…Sorry Dane.
3. You can get near real-time updates from the other side of the world.
Somehow Snapchat seems to have dethroned Twitter in the ‘real-time updates’ game. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to quickly Snap a photo of the talk you are watching at Cannes (see below…David Copperfield is a boss) whereas tweeting about it requires some sort of intelligent point of view and witty hashtag.
I guess what I am getting at is that even though most of the content on Snapchat is sub-par in terms of what most classify as ‘quality’, it gives people an insight into micro-moments in the lives of their friends and family and takes online chat to a whole new level.
If you are even somewhat interested in what the Aussies are getting up to in Cannes feel free to follow us on Snapchat (@roshrafferty & @nelsondemartini). Today Nelson and I will be in full on brief response mode so warning if the content just becomes really zoomed in videos of Nelson’s face as we try to come up with a brilliant idea.
By Cannes Young Lion winner, Carat digital manager, Roisin Rafferty