Health Lions Day One

The Cannes Lions festival begins this year with two days of "Health Lions," which is completely dedicated to health, wellness, and pharma advertising. Today marked day one, and I think I fell in love. I have never been in a place where everything/everyone around me is so innovative and inspiring. I seriously felt like I was in the future. As I walked through the entrance and got my badge scanned for the first time, I looked around in complete awe. Everything was so big and beautiful and amazingly designed. I was surrounded by people I had never met but wanted to learn everything about. There were people from all over the world with one common appreciation for creativity. It was some kind of heaven.

Right when I got to the festival I went downstairs to retrieve my "swag bag." I haven't looked in it yet but I think it's full of books and tips for the week. I'm also pretty sure I saw one of those virtual reality cardboard goggle things- so I can't wait to explore the bag of swag.

The first lecture I went to was an interview hosted by Saatchi & Saatchi called "The Power to Change Lives is in All of Us." The interviewers spoke with a girl named Olivia Hallisey and Dr. Kent Brantly. Olivia is a girl who won the Google Science Fair for creating an easy and cheap device that tests for Ebola. It worked essentially like a pregnancy test. It was important because it was the first Ebola test to be made cheaply and didn't have to be kept in a refrigerator, making it easily accessible and affordable. She wanted to create something that would actually help people- and she did it. It was absolutely astonishing to hear her speak about this because she was so young (sophomore in high school) and such an inspiration to regular peeps like me. Dr. Kent Brantly sat beside her. Kent was a Doctor helping patients in west Africa with Ebola and actually ended up being diagnosed with it. He came back to the US as the first American to ever come back with the virus. He spoke about how horrible the disease was and was able to humanize with victims of it very nicely. Dr. Kent was actually Olivia's inspiration for her science fair, and this was the first time they had met. It was such a beautiful moment. They were both so great to listen to. Now, all I can think about is my high school science fair which involved testing the nutrients in bananas. Maybe one day my bananas will inspire others.

 I wondered around a little and came across a life changing experience: virtual reality finger painting. You put on headphones and a mask thing and you magically teleport into an art studio. I was then able to choose colors from a palette and paint with my fingers on a canvas. I did a self portrait. It was so fun. Also very nauseating!

Afterwards I walked around outside near the beach to find food. I bought a ginormous chicken sandwich and devoured it. Some lady handing out free drinks gave me a grapefruit green tea. It's my new fav.

The next lecture I went to was called "Zen and the Art of the Publicity Stunt" hosted by Taylor Herring. It was basically about how to advertise without using you brand name, and just doing things to get attention. I really enjoyed this lecture also. The guys presenting did some publicity stunts for Game of Thrones- one where they created a giant dragon skull and put it on the beach somewhere. Things like this cause people to talk and post on social media, and also wonder why/who was responsible. This was a super cool way to advertise to me, and a way to get free media attention. They also talked about how to beat the "adblocalypse" because most people have an automatic hatred for ads and will do anything to skip them or fast forward through them. I really liked this lecture!

While walking around upstairs, I met a man named Alex Berry with the company Sutrue. He 3D prints medical equipment that helps stitch up patients/the insides of patients. He told us all about how he had been working on this project for 10 years and showed us how the 3D printing works. We talked for a pretty long time. Although his product is still a prototype, he thinks it'll be used by doctors in maybe 6 years. Pretty cool! He also promised us that if we brought him an STL file of anything tomorrow he would print it for us for free. Pretty sweet!

I then went to a lecture about how Tinder was used by NHS to promote donating organs, because organ donors have to be the perfect match. This lecture sounded like it would be cool but wasn't my favorite.

I watched some dude achieve a Guinness World Record for doing the most 180 turns on a unicycle in one minute. He did 26. It was dope.

Later I went to an interview of David Copperfield. I didn't really listen because I just wanted him to do some magic. He ended up turning a piece of paper into a flower. And he made a duck teleport from box to box. It was really cool to see him perform.

Another cool thing about the festival is that there's a networking app that is basically Tinder and you swipe people depending on if you are interested in talking to them and if you match it's called a "handshake." It's kind of funny but also an awesome resource to meet some CEOs! 

Overall, today was really exciting. There are so many things I witnessed and experienced that are so hard to explain in just a blog. This next week is going to be super busy and I can't wait!