Cannes Film Festival: A Comparative Analysis of Marketing Approaches

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the marketing strategies employed by the Cannes Film Festival, comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of social media and traditional marketing methods. The report begins with an overview of critical thinking and its application to marketing strategies, followed by a detailed examination of how social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are utilized for event promotion. It highlights the benefits of social media, including wider reach, cost-effectiveness, and real-time engagement, while also acknowledging the limitations of traditional methods like television, radio, and print media. The report includes a comparison between social media marketing and traditional methods, and also examines the strategies used by Cannes Film Festival to promote the event. The report concludes that social media is crucial for the successful promotion of the event, offering enhanced popularity and global reach. It also discusses the impact of social media on the event, including controversies and negative publicity, and provides insights into the future of marketing strategies for the Cannes Film Festival.

INTRODUCTION TO
CRITICAL THINKING

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Overview......................................................................................................................................1
Contrasting analysis with traditional methods.............................................................................3
Comparison between social media marketing and traditional methods used by Cannes............5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Critical thinking is the conceptual outlook where any process can be conceived,
implemented, evaluated, synthesized and scrutinized with respect to any idea or information in
order to find answers to all the rational, predictable and logical things. Main motive of this report
is to assess the influence of social media in promoting global event as compared to traditional
methods. For this purpose, Cannes film festival has been considered which is an invitation-based
event that takes place every year near French Riviera.
MAIN BODY
Overview
Social media in modern era is the most powerful tool to market any event or service.
There are various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Instagram, WhatsApp,
Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and many more for propagation of promotional activities in context
of Cannes film festival. With context to social media, a well-defined strategy for the entire
promoting of an event must be backed by thorough analysis as compared to the effectiveness of
traditional methods (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). Motto is to minimize the usage of resources by
maximizing the productivity and reachability of advertising methods used by Cannes.
Additionally, social media with mass media communication is inter-connected and plays
a significant role in creating awareness and popularity of Cannes event, which is gaining
popularity in reaching audience conveniently without any physical contact. Their inclusive
influence on the public is very domineering and fruitful by generating revenues
Recently, social media has brought a revolutionized change in context to promotion and
marketing of an event at global scale like Cannes, which is a fancy deal for movie makers and
production companies (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014). Nonetheless, it is still a mystery for normal
people who do not follow it. However, use of different social media platforms on internet has
provided an eye opening contribution about this event as it is centered on a specific sector whose
visibility and reach was limited earlier because of dominance of traditional methods.
Cannes was organized from 8th to 19th May this year, which brought celebrations to its 70
glorious landmark, embarking on its creative reach by the use of social media which has been
extended beyond any awards or laurels. Its services are widely recognized and has a credible
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name due to its exclusivity in premiering many greatest films, documentaries, movies releasing
that are based on all walks of lives as well as in various languages (Wilkinson, 2018). This event
after shifting its gear from traditional to social media has clearly broken all the geographical
diversities and cultural disparities.
Besides, social media helped Cannes attendees to look forward to the world’s busiest
movie market called as Marche’ du Film, where many new or struggling filmmakers search for
financiers or distributors for their films. Furthermore, movie distributors discover ways to
showcase their films to garner critique acclaim and audience as well. This festival paved a path
in terms of marketing gimmicks used by all the social media platforms to generate revenues and
attract potential investors.
PR (Public relation) agencies of celebrities and fashion designers also help in promoting
this event by using different media networks (Ellison and et.al., 2014). Fans who follow these
people can be attracted towards this event by following or subscribing their official page or
website.
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Figure 1: Twitter hashtag for promoting Cannes
(Source: Twitter, 2018)
Contrasting analysis with traditional methods
Cannes uses traditional methods, including television, radio, newspapers, brochures,
billboards, direct mail, telemarketing, pamphlets, etc. whose reach is limited on globalization
scale, and it also implemented social media tactics for advertising the overall activities.
Traditionally, it sometimes could not cross geographical boundaries, along with it is expensive
and time consuming process and the results cannot be measured. Moreover, both of them focus
on providing information to customers rather than interacting directly (Ceron and et.al., 2014).
Simultaneously, role of social media methods for Cannes in spreading news has wider
acceptance, cheaper and just a click away using tools like laptops, smartphones, I-pads,
computers etc.
In addition to it, visuals are easier to remember and attract potential audience to any event
through correct planning of how social media will be implemented (Chu, 2011). Thus, sponsors
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of this event used social media platforms efficiently by giving a foundation through forming a
YouTube channel, creating a fb page or hashtag on twitter to get support from all over the world
in order to form their brand value as well as gain customers through loyalty of that company’s
products like L’oreal, Air France, hp, Kering, Chopard, Renault and CANAL+. Nevertheless
earlier, billboards or pamphlets or advertising columns in newspapers were the medium to create
the visual impact on the customer’s mind.
There has been massive effect on implications obtained due to social media advertising
techniques as content in today’s world can act as the catalyst to make any event popular in less
time with higher cost effectiveness. This provides an edge to achieve widespread reach across
the world. Cannes organizing team start promotions few months back that attract audience
towards their official pages or channels on various podiums, which also gets updated
immediately after every action in terms of sharing of post, update, video so that number or likes
or subscriptions to generate revenues for this event. When Cannes created their official website;
along with it, they created separate pages on each social media platform to gain momentum on
internet. As per the survey conducted by Event manager blog, it has been analyzed that 52% of
event planners specified that Facebook is the most effective social media channel for event
promotion. It again came on top in managing customers (SOLARIS, 2018). On the contrary, with
regard to traditional methods like use of radio or television did had such an impact regarding any
updated news related to event but it would get telecasted at specific time period, giving a narrow
gap for the followers to be updated on constant basis.
Moreover, Cannes implemented promotional activities through newspapers to spread
awareness about their annual ritual of conducting this festival, although, printing was a long
process with editing and search for authentic pictures to make it interesting made it a
cumbersome job and low revenue generation (Stevens, 2017). On the other hand, social
platforms gave writers the largest bench to voice their opinions and thoughts regarding event
through diverse channels like blogging, e-newspaper, articles on Facebook or twitter, making
posters and sharing it and more.
Along with the above mentioned intermediates, radio stations occupied a small share in
promoting and generating awareness amongst people about Cannes. Interviews and short
programs related to the happenings of this festival were given at regional or local areas. earlier,
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radio gained attention but it was an expensive commodity so initially, its reach was restricted.
However, usage of digital marketing techniques like PPC (Pay-Per-Click Advertising), social
media marketing is the trendiest thing to follow to speed up the process of event’s activities on a
larger scale by telecasting live updates through Tumblr or Fb and also uploading videos on
YouTube channel immediately after that event takes place.
Figure 1: Snapshot of YouTube Cannes official channel
(Source: YouTube, 2018)
Comparison between social media marketing and traditional methods used by Cannes
Cannes had used print media, broadcast media etc. as it was easy to understand and
targeted the local audience conveniently. E.g. Mailbox flyers were used to attract the people
from that region. Whereas, the loopholes were small connection between this event and
customers, success rate could not be determined and expensive tools were involved like radio,
TV, billboards and more.
On the other hand, social media helped the organizers targeting the national and
international followers efficiently as well. It is cost efficient and assists in developing a brand
image in real time space. Along with, it generated revenues exponentially by adapting to the cut-
throat competition prevailed in the market for promoting and advertising this event (Holt, 2016).
It also leads to innovation and create awareness by discovering more benefits to improve the
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reputation of their business. However, it has also affected their role in negative way. Few people
pose as organizers and ask for hefty amount to give fans an entry ticket, that leads to fraud and
scam. It also adds to woes by negative publicity of the event that might incur financial losses to
the organizing committee.
This event is getting bigger and better as years are progressing. Many sponsorships are
willing to join this with suitable participation from filmmakers of regional cinema on diverse
stories and backdrops, adding feathers to its golden cap of reputation. Due to increased
interventions by social media platforms, Cannes has attracted negative backlash as controversies
and other unwanted news got out like catching fire. This year, it has led to banning of Netflix
because of alternations in the changing rules of theatrical screening. Also, back in 2015, selfies
were banned on the Red Carpet due to few accidents that took place.
CONCLUSION
It can be summarized that social media platforms are crucial for the promotion of this
event successfully. Overall, effects of organizing Cannes globally is beneficial and its adoption
of strategic switching from use of traditional methods to employing of social media using
channels like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more have proved to be an effective and
constructive move which enhanced its popularity proficiently in the world.
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