Media companies are blowing the party budget at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, where they are outdoing each other to bring in celebrities to add stardust to their events.
Poster outfit Clear Channel enlisted Mariah Carey to sing at its private bash last night and Spotify had dance group Basement Jaxx at its party. Singer Courtney Love turned up at Facebook’s event and Kanye West spoke, rather than rapped, on stage at a Cannes panel discussion.
That’s as rock ’n’ roll as the ad industry gets. But there is dismay as Gisele Bundchen has pulled out of events tomorrow at short notice.
Hall first choice?
Did the Edinburgh Television Festival want BBC director-general Lord Hall as its first choice to give August’s MacTaggart Lecture, the most important speech of the year for the TV industry?
Hall could be forgiven for wanting to avoid a big speech on the state of broadcasting when BBC News is poised to strike over mass redundancies, and even allies in Labour are openly discussing the idea of rethinking the licence fee. Channel 4 boss David Abraham is giving this year’s MacTaggart.
Facebook rules the sharing roost
Facebook — and not the journalists’ favourite Twitter — remains the most powerful social platform for sharing news. That is according to the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report after a survey of 10 countries.
In Spain, 26% use What’s App, also owned by Facebook, for news, pushing Twitter into third place. In Brazil, YouTube and Google+ are also more popular than Twitter for news.
