On Cannes: Young Ad Rebels on the Fringe

On a second-floor balcony across the street from the Palais des Festivals here in Cannes, a subversive group of young ad people is offering up an alternative to the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

They call it the Cannes Fringe, and their message is that the formal ad festival is elitist, exclusionary, and prohibitively expensive.

When one takes into account the price of a one-week all-access delegate pass (more than $5,000)--not to mention the price of a bottle Heineken on the ad-exec-filled veranda of the nearby Carlton Hotel (more than $15)--it's hard to disagree.

Once members of the Cannes Fringe staff decide a visitor isn't a risk, they give him or her a free all-access pass and lead the newbie upstairs, where a party and a lot of media making is always in progress.

"We have asked the Lions to embrace the Fringe," said Asa Bailey, the unofficial spokesperson for the Fringe, an interactive director in London who is wearing a camouflage field cap and wraparound sunglasses. "But they didn't see us fitting into their business model, which is structured for the big multinationals and not bloggers and new-media types like us."

Sponsors, known as Friends of the Fringe, have set up a lounge with a 180-degree view of the Palais, a well-stocked bar, and a remote video studio for on-the-spot interviews. The sponsors include the Advertising Producers Association, a music licensing company, an ad agency, the blog AdRants, and various production houses.

"A lot of people are here in Cannes because they love advertising but have never actually set foot inside the Palais," said Patrick Holtkamp, a Fringe enthusiast who works for a London-based film company. "The festival is great and brilliant, but it should lower its fees at least for some events and open things up for a new breed of young creatives who unfortunately can't afford to see the best work in the world."

Holtkamp said more than 80,000 people visited the fringe's website during last year's festival, and this year is on a pace to eclipse that number.

The ad-sponsored site features interviews filmed at the Fringe lounge featuring headliners like Saatchi & Saatchi's C.E.O. of China Pully Chau, fresh off a standing room only performance in the "official" venue across the boulevard. Several times a day a video is producedand driven to a small apartment on a hill outside town where, from a tiny bedroom, it is broadcast to the world.

"I'd like to see young people and even consumers coming to Cannes," said Bailey. "Anyone interested in being creative should be able to come and party and make face to face connections that we can sustain later with social media."

Judging from the atmosphere in the Fringe lounge, the internationally diverse members of Cannes Fringe have already accomplished that. Perhaps next year they'll enter their website in the Cannes Cyber Lions competition.

by James P. Othmer

For an interactive map of Cannes parties, click here.