Cannes Do

That happened fast.

Seems like it was just yesterday that I was taking my sharp pointy pen to the annual advertising orgy known as the Cannes Festival.

Can an entire year have passed since I sat in my home in Culver City and passed snarky judgment on the fashionistas, hipsters and makers of the world's most treasured advertising, gaudily displayed in the south of France?

How is it possible that the earth made an entire celestial orbit around the sun since we last visited the trinket collectors who have refreshed, changed and pushed the world forward with their monumental achievements in advertising and content creation?

And the panels.

Those precious prescient panels where professional prognosticators predicted the death of television, the birth of robust brand engagement and the re-birth of the banner ad.

If 365 days have come and gone since then, shouldn't we all be knee-deep in conversations with Tostitos, Crest toothpaste and Bounty Paper towels, the quicker picker-upper?

Maybe when you turn 44 years old the clock goes a little faster because it feels like the ink has barely dried on my 2014 shredding of Cannes. Not to mention 2013, 2012 and the scathing thought piece of 2011, wherein I tackled:

Stingy brim fedoras

Capri pants

Rose wine

Company yachts

Elitism

Over-promoted, under-skilled agency brass

The 5,000 mile international boundary for permissible infidelity

The Gutter Bar

V-neck T-shirts

The tone-deaf Facebook postings of rampant agency debauchery while homebound "team members" forfeit their nights and weekends to assemble pdf's of decks that will digitally transverse the ocean only to remain gleefully unzipped. 

Even though I relish the opportunity to take thinly-veiled potshots at the industry and the greedy gluttons who have so diligently earned the disdain of their colleagues, it just seems so done.

Doing another blog piece on the excesses of the festival feels tired. And repetitive. And meaningless. And wasteful. And self-important.

Wait a minute.

Could this lazy regurgitation of past work be the perfect metaphor for Cannes and the current state of advertising?