Realistically, the cost of attending Cannes is going to add up to something approaching three thousand pounds for a single registered individual.
Add the cost of awards entries and other extras, and the cost to agencies seems immense. Especially when, in the manner of all forms of business expenditure, it is viewed all the more critically when there is a danger that it might be enjoyable. (People rarely get quite so exercised when a company spends £50,000 upgrading its lift machinery, for instance.)
A degree of embarrassment surrounds the whole event, too. "What would all the clients say?"..."How can we justify it?"
Very easily.
If you ask any of your clients, you will find they have something called an R&D budget. We don't.
Imperfect thought it is, Cannes is the closest approximation we have to R&D.
In truth, an R&D budget would not be much use in a shareholder-driven advertising agency in 2007; at the first whiff of a income downturn, it would be the first to go. Indeed, as things stand in currrent agencies, you could have a small department on the verge of a cancer cure and people with clipboards would be going round asking why their utilisation rate was so low and complaining that they were messing up the Staff-Cost-to-Revenue Ratio.
So, what we do is Cannes instead. Paid for by a messy assemblage of travel budgets, training budgets, awards budgets and entertainment budgets.
Let's face it, there are lousy management training courses held in West Midlands hotels that charge as much as the registration fee for Cannes. But noone gets moralistic about those.
Perhaps that's the answer - move the whole event to Birmingham National Exhibition Centre? The Baltis would be better, and absolutely nobody would complain.
Rory Sutherland
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 02 Dec 2008
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