Aussies In Cannes Meet For Drinks At LBB & Friends Beach

Australians living and working around the world have gathered at Little Black Book's Aussie Cannes Drinks, held on Tuesday evening at the LBB & Friends Beach.

LBB partnered with Advertising Council Australia (ACA), AWARD, and leading production company Truce to unite Aussies working across markets, and catch up with friends new and old.

Hosted by LBB global CEO and founder Matt Cooper, and LBB AUNZ managing editor Brittney Rigby, the event brought together CMOs, CEOs, CCOs, EPs, and more across agencies, brands, and production companies.

"It's great that we've got marketers, we've got media people, we've got agency people, production people, film producers," said ACA CEO Tony Hale in a short address.

"I just want to thank Little Black Book, because they've put this on, they've backed us in Australia ... it's so important for Australia to have proper, quality creative journalism and you guys are doing it."

So far this week, LBB Beach has hosted panel discussions with the likes of Ogilvy’s global CEO Devika Bulchandani, who said, "We have a business and commercial responsibility to our clients to understand everybody, and I'm not sure we're great at it."

M+C Saatchi’s global CEO, Zaid Al-Qassab, called agency attitudes towards the word ‘advertising’ “a classic example of the sort of nonsense we talk at Cannes [about] to ourselves,” on a panel alongside fellow agency leaders Nancy Reyes, Amitesh Rao, and Melissa Jackson Parsey.

Bruno Bertelli, global CEO at LePub, and Nabil Nasser, global head at Heineken, spoke about their deep creative partnership, and Le Truc’s founding partner Andy Bird admitted AI can "take away too much of the joy and the beauty of filmmaking."