Elevating the conversation around education...at Cannes!

This year marked the first year for the New Marketing Institute (NMI), to have a physical presence at the Cannes Lions Festival. We couldn’t have asked for better conversations, speakers, panels, workshops or an event as a whole. We were able to connect with a diverse audience who share in our commitment, passion and enthusiasm for Adtech and Education.

Cannes first timers, Elise James DeCruise, VP (Founder) of NMI and Debbie Taylor, NMI EMEA Lead joined up with the wider MediaMath group for some EXTREME networking.

For anyone reading this that has not attended, the Festival is huge and can be a little overwhelming. There is so much to do and attend. All the way down La Croisette (beachfront) is branding and work (rosé drinking) spaces, which all the key players sponsor. Including some fairly swanky yachts, thank you Mr. Murdoch!

The Palais de Festival is where all the main content happens. Many high profile personalities give talks and sit on panels throughout the Festival. Including Gwyneth Paltrow, The Fat Jew, Amber Rose, Blac Chyna & Martha Stewart to name a few. The lifestyle entrepreneur even divulged that she took up pottery whilst serving 5 months in prison and made a very beautiful nativity scene!

We had a booth at the very cool Innovations Centre. This is where brands, start ups and educational folks get together to see what’s new, what’s hot and share ideas. Each day brought awesome speakers to the various stages. They covered a breadth of topics, like how to make video content engaging and meaningful. Harvard Business school talked about technology and its impact on education and the future. The space was designed to be a hub for creativity and how to move our industry forward collectively.

We were fortunate to meet a huge number of interesting people at our booth, doing all sorts of different roles across our industry. All sharing a common problem: education (and the gap we have in this particular space). NMI are solving for a very real need and as we shared our story at Cannes we saw faces light up! We took a LOT of new contacts into our database. Everyone was on the same page that the complexities of this industry and all the nuances that come with it mean that we cannot navigate it alone. Nor can we work in silos.

What became apparent in our many talks with brands and agencies across the industry, from globally recognised to smaller set ups, was how excited folks became when we spoke about our offering. Including the way that NMI is solving the talent gap through our Marketing Engineer Program (MEP). MEP is where we train and place individuals interested in learning about the ecosystem and the technology that underpins it and place them in full time roles at brands, agencies and technology partners.

Our ability to meet the learner where they are in location, learning style and experience was also a hot topic of conversation. For example, if you are doing business in London and EMEA, US stats and figures are great but not as helpful as what’s happening in your market. Additionally, accessible online bite-sized information is a major factor when you're trying to stay on top of the latest trends in our ever changing industry. We get that.

All in all NMI @ Cannes was incredibly valuable. It gave us a fantastic platform to be able to tell our story and everyone loves a GREAT story, right?! Here’s to next year……

If you're curious about how programmatic can work for you and your organisation, take a look at our upcoming Practical Programmatic course. This will run at DMA House on Thursday 18th August. Also, look out for our next DMA webinar 'Giving credit where it's due - A look at Attribution', which will take place on the 24th August.