Cannes You Back That Up?

Last month I was fortunate enough to spend a week on my company's boat at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, glamour and glitz aside this is a pretty big event in the annual calendar of Cutting Edge as the movie industry is our centre of gravity so it wasn't all champagne and parties; some proper work gets done on the boat.

That said (and though I personally met some very nice, hard-working people) there was a slight whiff of the fake and phony. Reading Kevin Jackson's blog the other day reminded me of Cannes and how it seems full of people pretending to be things, in the hope that one day the pretence might become real.

I lost count of how many actors and producers, development executives, packagers, executive producers and writers I met. Some of them were the real deal - the vast majority were anything but. It is an old joke that anyone can be a producer - all they have to produce is a business card!

To my mind, you are not anything unless you can earn a living doing it. Actors may claim to be actors but if they are incapable of landing a role then why are the deluding themselves?As for Executive Producers...If all it means is that you fund your own activities in the movie business then why not go spend your money on something more worthwhile than a trip to Cannes and a lot of hot air? Buy a camera? Write a script maybe? If you are any good then the money will find you.

But of course, the movie business is not the only one where blaggers pretend to be what they are not. Sonic Branding has seen its own explosion of blaggers; people jumping on the bandwagon without taking the time and effort to know what they are doing. This only damages the industry - every client who is sold a half-baked solution is lost to us for many years. So I urge anyone who wants to be in the sonic branding game to first do your time (and I think the 10,000 hour rule applies).

Read the books, then work in music, sound design, branding or advertising. Do this for a long time. Listen ALOT. Once you understand how the whole relationship between a brand and its audience works, once you know music theory and have an understanding of consumer psychology, then you can call yourself a sonic brander...until that point how about saying 'I am learning about sonic branding'.

I'm still learning and I've been doing this longer than anybody!

Right, I'm off to pursue my career as an F1 racing driver. Did I not mention that is my real job? Of course, I've never actually sat in a car but...