Every year since 1946, in the French Riviera, Cannes hosts one of the most glamorous events of the year: the Cannes Film Festival. Attracting Hollywood stars and A-listers from all around the world, this is the one event you don’t want to miss. STYLIGHT isn’t one to miss out on an opportunity, especially when it includes the latest fashion, celeb style and red carpet gossip. But why is it so important for brands to be part of this star-studded, international event?
1. Cannes Film Festival is the most glamorous event of the year, not only attracting Hollywood celebs, international it-girls, personalities and journalists, but also hundreds of digital influencers! French blogger Betty Autier from Leblogdebetty.com and Kenza Sadoun from larevuedekenza.com, are regular guests of Villa Schweppes as well as many international influencers like blogging superstar Chiara Ferragni, the Swede Kenza Zouiten, Gala Gonzalez, and Mariano di Vaio. L’Oreal also invited French influencers to promote their “Superstar” line, together with Eva Longoria. So if you want your brand to show up in the world’s biggest blogs’ posts, on Instagram, and basically everywhere on the internet, get your name out there in Cannes.
Gala Gonzalez, Mariano Di Vaio, Camila Coutinho and Kenza Zouiten @Cannes
2. The festival is not reserved for famous luxury houses only. The Cannes Festival attracts not only celebrities and journalists, it is also a time when many tourists and visitors come along to get a glimpse at their favorite actors. Celio, a French prêt-a-porter men’s brand, launched a “bow tie” operation and a capsule collection: in Cannes, people got the chance to win a bow tie if they took a selfie with it and published it with specific hashtags as well as tagging the brand. The Celio store located in Cannes also had a pop-up barber shop for the time of the festival. This goes to show that you don’t have to be Chanel to promote your brand in Cannes!
3. There’s always a lot of gossip from the start: #CANNESNOSELFIE #NOHEELS. Cannes forbade selfies this year in an attempt to preserve its classy image. This made us think of why Cannes is special and so we decided that it would be interesting to compare Cannes with the Oscars, or selfie-central, if you will.
Starting with this idea, we completed our content campaign with a full series of funny differences. The results were beyond expected: we got almost 200 international articles dedicated to the piece and features in Glamour, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Femme Actuelle, and Avantages just to name a few!
If you read the top fashion magazines and newspapers, or simply listen to the radio and TV (BBC, The Guardian, etc) you will have heard about the “NO HEELS” controversy, which once again was one of the most viral stories to come out of Cannes this year. That’s why we completed our content campaign with another card (click here to see the full infographic!).
We also decided to create some exclusive t-shirts and distributed them in from of the “Palais des Festivals”.
Our French PR & Content Marketing team sur la croisette
4. Because the press is editing special editions for the festival. Magazines such as Grazia and Glamour dedicate special editions to the festival, its stars, and events… If they like what you have to offer, you might be lucky and get a feature.
5. Because of the event’s social exposure. Cannes is one of the biggest and most celebrated film festivals in the world and is always the talk of the tabloids, due to the sheer volume of celebrities who flock there and generally look glamorous. Everyone is using Social Media to share pictures, thoughts and special moments on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and most recently Snapchat.
Cannes overall social media coverage (Credits: STYLIGHT)
… and because, according to Thomaï Serdari, Ph.D., founder of PIQLuxury and adjunct professor of luxury marketing at New York University:
“The Cannes Film Festival is itself one of the most venerated cultural institutions […] the exposure brands get in return and most importantly the association of their name with that of the film festival is priceless.”
This basically means that the Cannes Film Festival is seen as classy and timeless and who wouldn’t want their brand to be associated with that?
Could you be part of next year’s festival? Yes, you Cannes!
|By Marine Jullien|
