Camp Cannes

Ok, we were hoping for a good turn out. But, when nearly 200 people showed up for our Camp Cannes session, we were amazed. More than anything, we were stunned that nearly 200 people could fit into a room only supposed to hold 50. (I suppose that the French have a laissez faire approach to room capacity and fire hazards.) Regardless, I just had to share the sign-in sheets--folks from every country and agency you can think of.

Looking forward to continuing the dialogue with everyone!

- Amanda Van Nuys

We're still working on cutting down a highlight reel to show the process of the workshop exercise. In the meantime, here's a recap in text and pictures:

The Exercise

People divided into teams of 8-9. Each team was assigned a unique target. The assignment for all teams was to engage the target, search for insights and surprises, develop a thumbnail sketch of a persona, decide upon a "gift," or simple truth, about the persona, then brainstorm ways to reinvent travel with this gift in mind. Oh, and they had an hour to do it.

Welcome to the Camp Cannes blog!

Here we'll be recapping our workshop for Cannes Lions 2008 entitled, "Walking in Their Shoes: Boot Camp for Consumer Empathy." We'll post updates as we get them. Feel free to comment and discuss -- we're all ears (and eyes).

First, thanks to everyone who attended the workshop yesterday and apologies to those who were turned away. We tried to fit as many people as we could into the room (as you can see from the photo). For those who missed it, the workshop covered why empathy is important to what we do and how we arrive at it. Those brave souls who elected to stay after that got to experience firsthand via an exercise we call Camp Cannes, a miniature version of Camp Organic, an intense 3-day exercise we do four times a year in Las Vegas.

We love coming to Cannes Lions for the diversity and creativity of the attendees here. We saw both in abundance at the workshop. Close to 200 people attended from 50 different countries and 75 different agencies/companies. From the 35 people who stayed to do the exercise, we witnessed a passion for discovering empathy-based insight and some great ideas sprang from those insights. The latter group were rewarded with t-shirts and cameras...as if the journey itself wasn't a reward.

We're still compiling footage of the workshop presentations, which we'll post later today. Stay tuned.