Why eos chose Cannes Lions as the site of its first influencer trip

For its first influencer brand trip, eos isn’t flying creators out to Coachella or a resort on Bora Bora. Instead, it’s selected a somewhat unconventional destination to host a group of influencers—the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Next week, the beauty and skincare brand is hosting six creators at a villa just beyond the Croisette, said Soyoung Kang, chief marketing officer at eos. The group includes creators Stacy Thiru, Serena Kerrigan, Victoria Paris and Madeline Argy, as well as actress Avantika Vandanapu, who recently appeared in the “Mean Girls” reboot, and Chelsea Miller, co-founder of the youth-led civil rights organization Freedom March NYC. Cannes Lions coverage See all of the Grand Prix winners here Top 5 Grand Prix campaigns “Creators are really at the heart of all of the most creative stories that we’re telling and that we want to tell as brands,” Kang said. “So, it made so much sense to me to be a brand that brings [creators] over to experience [Cannes] for the first time, and to celebrate the fact that so many of our most successful and most creative partnerships and activations have been thanks to creators.” Also read: Influencers set for bigger role at Cannes Eos has previously collaborated with Thiru, Kerrigan and Paris on sponsored content, Kang said. She and her team were connected to the other three creators by the Next Gen practice of UTA Entertainment Marketing, whose head, Ziad Ahmed, proposed the idea of a Cannes influencer trip to Kang, she said. @stacythiru vanilla cashmere for the win🤭whats your favorite?? @eos Products #eoseffect #eospartner #ad ♬ original sound - stacyyyyy When he first suggested the idea, Kang “truly thought that Ziad was talking about the Cannes Film Festival,” she said. “That’s the place that creators want to go. But he was like, ‘No—creators actually want to go to Cannes Lions.’” The six influencers accompanying eos to the festival will be far from the only creators on the Croisette next week. For the first time, Cannes Lions has introduced a slate of programming focused specifically on the creator economy, called “Lions Creators,” along with a new festival pass aimed at creators and influencer marketing agencies and talent agencies. As a growing number of high-profile creators such as Emma Chamberlain and Adam Waheed have attended Cannes and posted about the festival on social media, Cannes has increasingly “come up on other creators’ radars” and fueled an “overwhelming desire from creators to be included in the conversation that’s happening in Cannes,” said Nate Jones, an executive at UTA Next Gen. He pointed to a recent episode of Jake Shane’s podcast “Therapuss,” where he and fellow creator Robyn DelMonte discussed their experience attending Cannes last year. @girlbosstown Night 1 #grwm ♬ Sprinter - Dave & Central Cee “A lot of the conversations that happen at the largest festival [for] marketing and advertising these days are about the creator economy, and so to not have those folks present in those conversations wouldn’t make sense,” Jones said. “That’s why we’re excited to be helping to sort of unlock those spaces for creators.” Several of the creators on eos’ influencer trip will appear on panels at UTA’s “ZCannes” mini-event (of which eos is a sponsor) during the festival, which exclusively features Gen Z speakers discussing topics such as how brands can reach Gen Z consumers through influencer marketing campaigns, Jones said. And some creators, including Argy, will be part of the broader Lions Creators programming, he said. While the goal of influencer trips for most brands is to squeeze social content out of the creators in attendance, eos isn’t requiring the six influencers on its trip to make any social posts, Kang said. Instead, she and the eos team are encouraging the creators to build connections with marketers and creators on the ground, attend panels and other events and to share their insights as creators with other festival-goers, she said. “I’m really glad to see that the official festival is really embracing creators and the importance of creators,” Kang said. “Up until now, without having that representation at the festival, we’ve maybe been missing some aspects of the way that we can create as brands and as marketers. And I’m really glad to see that that’s really evolving at this point.”

Why eos chose Cannes Lions as the site of its first influencer trip

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