Emma Stone, Dakota Johnson, Bono, Nicole Kidman, Scarlett Anderson, Spike Lee, Tom Cruise and Kristen Stewart were just some of the Hollywood A-listers that have descended upon the Croisette for the Cannes Film Festival this year. And where the A-listers go, the brands follow.
Mastercard rolled out the red carpet at the Hotel Barrière Le Majestic for its Priceless brand platform and sponsored the festival badges. Kering sponsored the Women in Motion program, an effort that celebrates 10 years of women in cinema. L’Oreal, Gucci, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Chopard got the actors’ red carpet ready.
“Cinema is an important passion for industry players, for consumers, for people and connecting the passions of our consumers is our main strategy and objective to create engagement with them,” said Cristina Sacca, SVP, consumer marketing & sponsorship Europe at Mastercard, on stage at Brand Innovators’ event at the Cannes Film Festival, done in collaboration with TheWrap, which also featured sessions with Kristen Stewart and Matthias Schweighöfer. Sacca added that cinema reflects the DNA of the brand because it “allows you to see life through different lenses.”
Photo Credit: Lucy Brumberger
Mastercard, in its 10th year as a partner of the festival, has created priceless packages at the event to support their Priceless brand platform. For this year’s festival, consumers who are lucky enough to earn the package get to stay at the Majestic Hotel among the stars, are given access to gowns to wear on the red carpet and can go to exclusive dinners. The festival also gives the brand a stage to illustrate its inclusion platform manifested in a red carpet “wide enough for every voice.” They also hosted financial inclusion content to help encourage women entrepreneurs.
“If a woman has a chance to manage her own finances and start her own business, she will be more independent, she will contribute to her family as well,” added Sacca.
Unilever ice cream brand Magnum has been a sponsor for 13 years in a row. This year, the brand decked out a beach to serve as the stage to debut its social-first “Crack Into Pleasure” campaign. The threw a party with Charli XCX and 300 influencers to the experiential activation in order to seed a campaign that will run all summer. Showing up in cultural spaces allows the company to meet their target audience where they are.
“We are an ice cream brand. We want to have the best tasting ice cream, but we also want to be a lifestyle brand,” said Tugce Aksoy, global brand director, at Magnum Ice Cream, Unilever on the Brand Innovators stage. “Film, art, fashion, music, these are all our passion points that we have been building on year over year.”
Aksoy added that the brand’s evolution at the event has evolved from featuring one big celebrity in a photo in a newspaper ad to creating a beach where fans are invited in to enjoy the ice cream. The menu included classic Magnum bars, but the opportunity to dip them, as well as to eat ice cream croissants at the Magnum bakery and the chance to sip on Charli XCX-inspired pistachio matcha milkshakes.
Magnum’s beach was next to Nespresso’s beach, where the Nestle coffee brand served up iced coffees and espresso, along with photo booth experiences all with a pastel-colored backdrop. The brand used the festival, which they have sponsored for more than a decade, to debut their “Press Play and Taste” campaign and their summer collection of capsules which include coconut vanilla and pistachio vanilla, inspired by the 90s. The brand hosted several A-list parties and partnered with Brut on one of the soirees.
Just down the way, Campari, another long-time sponsor of the festival, used their double decker beach stage to launch their summer “Red Passion” campaign with spokesman, the Academy Award-nominated Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. Like their beach neighbors, the Italian spirits brand also hosted many A-listers.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were also on the Croisette with a suite at the invite-only Martinez Hotel, which was completely closed to talent. The brand has been showing up at cultural moments from Coachella to the Cannes Film Festival and Monaco to show off their new Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
The wearable features built-in AI features like real-time translation, visual search and hands-free content creation. The brand hopes to get them in the hands of celebrities. They are already working with Matthew Vaughn, director of British spy thriller Kingsman. He shot a film using the glasses featuring pop singer Benson Boone.
“The camera is very good and we are seeing a lot of people doing very interesting things in this space,” said Bianca Spada, global social media + creators lead for wearables, Meta, who said she met with Damso, Belgian rapper/filmmaker, at Cannes. She said that “being in a place like this, having a product that is great for content creation, POV perspective, hands-free” offers opportunities for creators.
Perhaps next year’s festival will feature a film shot on the glasses. Until then, expect to see Brand Innovators back on the Croisette with several stages at the Cannes Lions in June and at the Cannes Film Festival next year.
