12 January 2017 – As I have noted in previous posts, I visit Cannes, France every year for Cannes Lions – the “The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity” which is a global event for those working in the creative communications, advertising and related fields.
Somewhat like the International Journalism Festival I also attend (or my staff when I cannot make it) in Perugia, Italy it is where I learn new approaches to storytelling in the digital age, including innovative technologies and methods being used to source stories and new formats being used to visualize the stories being told.
Last year at Cannes Lions there was a brilliant session on “scarcity”: nobody can add a 25th hour to the day. That’s the content life we need to measure. Any piece of content out there is competing against the entire wealth of human knowledge which we now have, more or less, accessible to us at any given moment. As I learned, there are “methods for metrics”.
As a result of contacts I have developed over the years, I receive a tsunami of arts-and-entertainment invitations, digital media, graphic art, etc.
The folks at Creative Review magazine … which writes about advertising, graphic design, illustration, typography, etc. … sent me this absolute gem:
A spec film was developed for Adidas by students at Germany’s Film Academy of Baden-Württemberg, and it has been gaining much attention online. The test spot tells the story of an elderly man at a nursing home who just wants to run (in his old Adidas trainers), but is prevented to by staff. But then, in scenes reminiscent to “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, he makes his escape.
The director, Eugen Merher, says the film was originally made in two-and-a-half days in 2015 though has only just been posted online. And Adidas had nothing to do with it, which, considering it’s the most emotional piece of work attached to the brand for some time, seems something of a shame.
Of course much of its emotional power comes from its potentially controversial subject matter, which, while fine in a test spot, might well have trouble getting through “the system” in a real ad. But it did. Adidas loved it.
Here it is: