Forget those late-night Cannes Lions parties — breakfast is where it’s at!
Just ask Stagwell Constellation’s chief strategy officer, Seema Miller, and creative chair, John Boiler, who are up early making deals and signing clients during the Cannes Lions festival.
The creative and strategic duo help run Stagwell’s Constellation Network — a group of marketing agencies that tackle the toughest business problems in order to facilitate growth.
Page Six sat down with the execs at Stagwell’s Sport Beach to talk about their work, and why dealmaking over coffee and a croissant trumps late nights out on Cannes’ famed drag, La Croisette.
Q: What is the Constellation Network for those who don’t know? And what do you do for your clients?
John Boiler: The Constellation is a group of some of the best marketing agencies within Stagwell. It’s about 15 different agencies.
Seema Miller: Our job is growth. What we are trying to do is a very different approach to growth as opposed to the traditional approach to growth which is pitching. The pitching process is long, it’s expensive for both parties, actually, clients as well as agencies. It’s a whole speed dating process that doesn’t always end up in a happy marriage. What we are trying to do is a little more like consulting. As a creative and strategy duo, we go in and are often hired to be embedded with the client. We spend a lot of time understanding what is the problem. We are working to understand what is actually happening.
Q: So they come to you with a problem and you go in and try to diagnose it?
JB: That’s right. It usually comes to us as a little bit more abstract which is a lot more interesting both creatively and strategically. We will have to work a little more extreme, as Seema said, embedded with our clients, to tease out what the actual problem is. Sometimes they think it’s this, but once you dig into it a little bit, it might be something completely different.
Q: How many clients do you have right now?
JB: In process, probably six or seven.
Q: So these are major projects?
JB: Major projects. Usually these are Fortune 500 companies.
Q: What kinds of problems generally are you approached to solve?
JB: They’re all so different. One of our first engagements turned really into what was a change management assignment within a marketing and creative org. Another one might be authoring a modern marketing playbook for a marketing department that has a new CMO that has come in that needs some help.
Q: Artificial intelligence for news people is very mysterious and somewhat fear-inducing because there’s a sentiment that AI will take over the news business. How do you approach AI with clients and how do you see it fitting into the advertising landscape?
JB: You can either choose to fear it or you can choose to get excited about it. As a creative person, I must admit my first instinct was really robots. But now that I’ve learned more about the capabilities of it, I’m very excited about it because as a creative person it’s going to transform the role you play.
SM: [AI] can’t replace originality.
Q: How has your Cannes been going? Have there been any funny stories with the clients you work with or interesting meetings?
SM: Loads! It’s great to see clients we haven’t seen in a little bit. It’s great to see people in the flesh. And then there’s always this random request that shows up like, “there’s this celeb who needs something. Or needs a pair of shoes. Hey can you scramble up a pair of shoes?” That’s what we are here for.
Q: What do you have planned for the rest of your Cannes Lions? Meetings, meetings, meetings?
JB: Yeah, meetings. We always blend fun into it. It is fun. You’ve got to enjoy it. I have a lot of fun stealing other agencies’ talent, trying to get their clients. It’s a sport. If you look at it right and play it like a sport, it’s really fun.
Q: Is it best to do that over lunch or over drinks?
JB: Both.
SM: The game is on.
JB: We have an expression: “Breakfast is for ballers. So get up for breakfast.”
Q: That’s hard sometimes with these late nights during the festival.
JB: It is but that’s when the good stuff happens in the morning. Don’t make it too late.
Q: That’s because everyone is hungover or tired from the night before.
JB: They’re pliable at breakfast.
SM: That’s where the sport metaphor really helps because you do have an athlete mindset to this. It doesn’t matter what it took yesterday, you’ve got to get up today.
