Rival Spark – Cannes Research Postcards

Objective:

As a start-up consultancy heading to Cannes, Rival lacked the budgets and awareness of large agencies and organisations. However, as a company focused on growing challenger brands to scale and change how markets operate, we knew we had to do something insightful to make our low budgets cut through in an authentic way at the event – turning the trip to the south of France’s festival into business results afterwards.

Insight:

Cannes offers a balance of learning and entertainment for advertisers from around the world. However, it can disconnect from the consumers it claims to focus on, instead celebrating what we love as an industry more than what normal people enjoyed. Despite being about marketing to customers, the festival can risk ignoring their voice and behaviours.

Approach: 

Rival Spark is Rival’s research and trends forecasting arm, which I headed up – executing monthly reports and research through primary market research. To give a voice to what consumers really care about at Cannes, we ran surveys on Artificial Intelligence, Brand Purpose against a sample of consumers and a sample of marketers in the run up to the festival. We additionally ran surveys during Cannes about the topics we overheard. This research gave a base for showing what people really believe, but we had to get it infront of marketers at Cannes in an engaging way – beyond just a powerpoint or sales deck.

Idea:

Attendees to any festival need something to bring back and Cannes is no different. However, marketers are expected to come up with pithy takeaways and trends when they return to the office. To support attendees with this and highlight our research, we created ‘Wish You Had Heard: Postcards from Cannes’ – featuring 5 individual post cards with different points of research on them. Each giving attendees the ability to share something they learned with everyone back home in an easy way, while highlighting Rival’s unique data and point of view.

1000 postcards were distributed around Cannes – featuring art created with Midjourney. From leave behinds in meetings and gifts to placements in surprise locations such as Gutter bar, airport postcard racks and gift shops, our postcards were everywhere Cannes attendees found themselves. In addition, our daily research was posted online, answering last nights questions and discussions with snap surveys.

// Agency: We Are Rival

// Role: Co-Founder / CSO