I worked for a summer as a carpenter's assistant in Louisiana. One of the jobs we did was tearing up rotting, spider-infested floorboards in 90-degree heat and 95% humidity. But at least that was in the shade. One of the other jobs we did was putting up a tin roof in 90-degree heat and 95% humidity. That was, obviously, not in the shade.
So I will not complain about the "grind" of doing Cannes. Sure, it's exhausting, but in the same way that binge-watching "How to Get Away With Murder" is.
Yesterday was an Ad Age-centric day. It started off with a panel discussion about programmatic, which was sponsored by The Exchange Lab and held at a restaurant called Casa Mia. The panelists were Becky Brown, VP-global marketing and communications at Intel, Eric Litman, worldwide senior VP-mobile at GroupM, Ben Jankowski, group head of global media at MasterCard, and Chris Dobson, The Exchange Lab's CEO.
It was an interesting back-and-forth but the thing that made my ears perk up most were a couple of comments toward the end, during a discussion about the invasion of tech companies at Cannes (an ongoing obsession for many people this week).
Predicting what Cannes would look like by 2020, Mr. Dobson prophesied a culling of the herd. "A lot of the VC money that's buying all these boats will run out," he said.
Ms. Brown agreed noting that there hasn't been "enough consolidation" and that there are "too many people trying to create things we don't need."
Ad Age will have more on that particular thought later.
After filling up on programmatic, I was in the mood for some politics so went down to the Palais to check out a presentation called "Creativity on the Stump." For an American well versed (or, put another way, exhausted) with our presidential election, it held little that was new. But I wrote about it anyway and you can read about that here.
I also noticed that a presentation called "Star Trek Beyond: Retelling an Iconic Story for a New Generation" had been canceled due to the death of actor Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the new iteration of the franchise.