I spent last week at Cannes Lions. It was my intention to write this on the plane home, decided to sleep instead. Forgive me.
Cannes Lions is an award ceremony concentrating advertising’s biggest players on the French Riviera for a hot sweaty week in late June. A brand will spend anywhere from 100k on a dinner to 4M for a concert. LinkedIn spent 11 million on a nightclub partnership with the Carlton Hotel. Outside of the award ceremony, there’s 1200+ external events happening across villas and chateaus throughout the week. All the while, each day is stocked with huge brand activations lining the same beach as the Cannes film festival.
I was fortunate enough to be a part of one of the many satellite events, one which last year, was awarded event of the year.
A few months ago, I got a call from Eron Lutterman (more on him below) asking if I wanted to stay at COLLINS house and cohost a few dinners. I said yes, duh. I got to co-curate and host one dinner alongside Keke Palmer, and another in partnership with the World Central Kitchen. You know Keke. But if you aren’t familiar with the WCK, they’re the single largest meal provider to victims of humanitarian disasters in the world. Most notably, providing the majority of meals to civilians in Ukraine and Gaza. Their founder, James Beard award winner Jose Andres, literally parachuted down into Ukraine hours after the war broke out so he could be boots on the ground for service. He’s emblematic of the non-profit in whole. Getting to do a dinner with their CMO, Robin Gonterman was a true privilege. Even more so, getting to build a seating chart where I got to put one of my favorite impact driven friends next to him, was very exciting for me (coincidentally, he already writes a monthly check to the WCK). @ Ziad Ahmed, you are now obligated to invite me to whatever comes out of your friendship with Robin, thanks.
Staying at the house for a week was transformational for me and my thinking. I got to spend my time with the true character that is Brian Collins, Ted Wright, founder of one of the nations largest word of mouth marketing firms (most notable for the reason you think chocolate milk is a great drink for after a workout), Scott Sanders who produced the Color purple with Oprah, Ken Hertz, one of music’s biggest lawyers, and some more great people.
In Cannes, many of the people you meet are wearing a forearm full of wristbands and multiple lanyards. I found it very off-putting. Thankfully, the COLLINS house has a playful (yet strict) no lanyards policy, which made the house feel like a deep breath away from the social heriarchy- flex maxxing slop down by the beaches.
I was gifted with the chance to manage the flow of talent into the greenroom and onto panels. I spent my time befriending the founder of J. press, CMO of the UN, CMO of Zoom, etc. I also had to do some firefighting of the French neighbors who were very upset that we were 3x over our agreed capacity.
I spent very little time at the festival itself. I actually didn’t even have a proper ticket. I did however make time to check out some stuff UTA hosted (thanks to Ziad Ahmed), Nova (Thanks to Aidan Cullen and Olivia Frary), the Google Creative House (thanks to Tina Tarighian), Spotify (thanks to Sterling Gualteri and Nate Jones) and LinkedIn (line was too long so I snuck in, someone get me a LinkedIn connect pls.)
I think I spent the right amount of time seeing everything, just enough to be able to discuss it and reflect on it. Eron warned me ahead of time that I likely wouldn’t want to leave COLLINS house. He was right. When these names are all coming to you, you aren’t looking for a reason to leave.
COLLINS house brought the CCO of Amazon, CMO of Zoom, CCO of Target, CMO of Walmart, CMO of Instacart, CMO of Coinbase, CEO of Gap, Tara and Hunter Woodhall, Emily Sundberg, the founder of Rowing Blazers and current President of J. Press, the Managing Director of Aston Martin F1, the Director of United Nations Outer Space Affairs.
In my time at the main festival, I did have some insanely cool experiences. I got to see RAYE live at Spotify. I watched her while sandwiched between Draymond Green and David Dobrik (both lovely guys). I then left to get a drink and found myself in conversation with the CMO of American Eagle. Networking tip, if you’re in a young room and there’s anyone who looks put together and over 45, talk to them.
Events all looked very different at Cannes. Ranging from a Ciroc blue padel court build out (that nobody showed up to, except for me) which required a shuttle to get to. OR, my favorite, a Grinder Bus where you could spin a wheel to win a bussy towel (their words), a free Grinder subscription, or an Away suitcase!! Great work Grinder, giving the people what they need.
Everyone is saying the big takeaway from this year is that creator economy now has a firm place within the festival. In past years, it had only been major celebrities and athletes. This year the creator economy had meaningful slots on panels, as hosts, and in audiences. Scott Galloway said creators used to be the cool kids invited to the afterparty, now they host the after party. (He’s talking about you JT Barnett).
I have three takes around what will happen in years to come.
Winning a Cannes lion award will become a creator’s north star goal
Next year, specifically, I expect brand dollars to flow into the pockets of creators and curators to host parties for far cheaper than 11Ms
Every young creator and leader in entertainment will feel an energy around Cannes similar to Coachella.
The tailwind behind all of these is that creators showed very clearly how exciting the week was, but more importantly, young leaders are publicly sharing their success stories from going.
The big pull to a wider audience going next year, I think, will be creators getting put up for more awards, (and winning). The creators who won awards this year earned immediate validation and credibility from the advertising industry. As that impact becomes more clear with time, more creators will start fighting to win awards themselves, bringing them to Cannes.
To my Coachella reference, the difference between the ad festival and the music festival is that the former attracts a far more professional and thoughtful crowd. I keep hearing people who should be there hold a fear that it’ll be too networky. I think that overly networky vibe you fear comes from bad experiences with people you don’t actually want to network with. In my experience, Cannes attracts an incredibly refined crowd, a very high percentage of them being senior level leaders at companies with money to spend on you. Also, something about being in another country together makes people quicker to drop their guard and more willing to befriend you.
Even if you don’t have any direct pitch to make, Catherine Goetze (@askcatgpt) said it best. “Cannes is special partly because by immersing yourself in a crowd of the most successful people in the world, you rewire your brain to think you deserve to be there too.” It directly impacts your vision, drive, and how you see yourself as a professional.
I’ll be returning next year. More on that and the directional growth that came out of my Cannes experience at the bottom of this post.
Jobs I think are interesting
Production and Operations Manager @ 3rd Space
After 30 dinners, nearly 1000 guests, and hundreds of artists, founders, and creatives featured, we're taking 3rd Space beyond New York. We're building a hospitality playbook that can travel to flagship cultural moments like Art Basel, Cannes Lions, Formula 1, and Fashion Weeks. We’re looking for a highly organized and experienced operator who’s worked in events who wants to help build and scale the business.
Graphic Designer @ Partiful
Self explanatory. Constantly impressed by the people in their orbit. Just made a new friend, shoutout Lucy Duckworth. She hosted a 150 person summer camp for her friends last week. Not even for Partiful, just for her own fun. These are the kinds of people you’d work with.
Co-Pilot (ambassador) @ Othership
If you know me, you know I’m an Othership loyalist. They’re a trailblazer in the hot-cold therapy boom, the first and only to lead guided classes.
For a anyone who loves experiential and wants to lead community but may not have the infrastructure to in their current situation, this could be your opportunity. At the very least, go try out a session. I personally recommend a “feel good now” class with a friend who also hasn’t been before. They’re soon to open a third NYC location in the UES. It’s designed with ambition to be the nicest sauna and bath house in the country.
Editor @ Amca
Coolest opportunity to break into new age industrials. They Just poached (the great) Nikole Naloy out of NYC lead creative marketing and brand. She’s now at their LA office, which looks like this…
“Amca’s Technical Editor will be responsible for translating the company’s extensive engineering and manufacturing capabilities into credible, technically-grounded content that reaches both engineering recruits and end customers in critical sectors, including but not limited to defense and aerospace. This person will sit on the Growth team”
Email: Nikole.naloy@amca.com
Growth & Product Marketing Manager @ Nova (Must be LA based)
Aidan Cullen is the creative of our generation. You likely know him from his work as Malcom Todd’s creative director. Nova successfully built LinkedIn for creatives. They accurately solved the problem by creating a quality bar for great paid creative gigs and only having great portfolios on the platform. They’ve facilitated hundreds of millions of salaries into the pockets of creatives.
Nova now has invoicing infrastructure built into the app. They have brand and marketing leaders from the world’s biggest companies + the nation’s best creatives all onboarded and fans of the product. They have the seeds of a creative empire. Their CMO Olivia Frary is also incredibly lovely and sharp.
Email: contact@itsnova.com
Operations Lead @ SWSH
Fresh off a $4M seed round, Ali Debow is a networking demon. Knows everyone everywhere, it’s stupid. Many of her investors put checks in a few years ago expecting pivots with trust that Ali would find a way to get it right. A bet on her hustle alone. Their bets are paying off. SWSH has evolved to become a content partner to every major music, sports, and brand event in the country. Also 3rd Space.
Head of Community @ Lox Club
I endorse Austin Kevitch and whatever he’s building or hiring for. Lox club is the first iteration of a members club for a niche community archetype. The goal is to write a playbook to build and scale numerous hospitality networks for a range of ethnic or religious communities. He’s found success with the dating app, Lox Club. People mention it to me frequently.
People to watch
Jon Schulder, 24, vol 19
Jon got his first real opportunity as the youngest intern on the US Senate (16). Coming back to high school from a summer in DC, he sought to help his peers get more involved in issues they cared about. So, he built a software that went on to work with 5 political campaigns in Georgia. The tech successfully broke young people into politics and got them connected to campaigns and opportunities that they could impact.
At Yale, Jon took a class called “Catalyzing the private sector in Africa” with a professor who formerly ran Citi Bank in Africa. Jon befriended her and asked for intros into her orbit. The class was so inspiring, he moved to Kenya by himself. Representative of his character.
Post-Kenya, he had a calling that his destiny was music. The single thing Jon loves most is being around music and musicians and his mind works best when thinking around creative strategy. To break in, he started his own artist project with Balthazar Lora as his producer and Wacomo as his content guy. More than his own project, he found himself helping both of his new collaborators with their careers. Jon’s x factor is excelling as a partner to others.
Enter Jon’s company, Triptych, an idea that by bringing together smart, hardworking, talented creatives, who want to work on their own projects, collectively, the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.
Here’s a peek into Jon’s world: traditionally, an artist gives much of their profits to lawyers distributors, labels, etc. In a legacy world, you needed lots of upfront capital to create music and media. The new model lets artists create for cheaper, or nothing. On the distribution side, you’d have to get into radio or record stores (similarly for film, where you’d have to get onto cable or in theaters). Now everything is direct-to-consumer. It used to be a fight to build relationships with a label or big corp, who would guarantee artists the means to create and distribute. Now, an artist can do it themselves.
Because the new infrastructure allows anyone to create and distribute media, management needs to rethink the edge they’re creating for their talent in the new entertainment ecosystem. Jon is building technology to create and distribute more effectively. He’s building a community and team of people from tech and business backgrounds, many coming from Ivy league schools and now building for the modern entertainment ecosystem. To our knowledge, there isn’t anyone building a similar team in the market.
Triptych is backed by some of the biggest names in music. (I did not get permission to write his raise announcement on here, but follow him now to catch the bomb he’s soon to drop.) If they do things right, Jon will write the playbook for the future of management companies and their duty to artists.
Sophia Almendral, 24, my beautiful cofounder
Hailing from beautiful Manila, Sophia is the *gorgeous creative force who’s built the 3rd Space brand. All of our art direction, photo direction, and brand aesthetic was built by her. Sophia is the single best mood boarder I’ve ever seen. If that doesn’t mean something to you, it’s a testament to how much research she puts into all her decisions. She builds all her assets from scratch, every time. Her references are always tied back to the most obscure BS I’ve ever seen. Her moodboarding is how we landed a contract with the House of Errors NYC pop up in Summer 2024. She found the reference photo of the brand’s logo from a 1940’s German magazine and the founder freaked out and agreed to work with us.
Sophia got her first gig out of school working at the esteemed ad agency, Oglivy. Now, she holds 2 jobs (as a designer with a16z and another at Matte projects) and is the embodiment of our intersection of culture and tech. Two highly coveted and highly respected gigs to earn, both held by the same gorl, all while creative directing 3rd Space.
She’s a cheerleader to all, doesn’t ever complain, and has the EQ of an angel. Perhaps I’m too close to her to write one of these in the same tone as the rest but this is what came out of my fingers today.
*All my words on Sophia (and every photo of us) read like we’re in love. Clarifying that we’re not. (if writing about a Grinder bussy towel on my substack wasn’t a clear enough giveaway)
Eron Lutterman, 27, vol 20
Eron led a TED X chapter at UNC Chapel hill where he successfully invited Leland Maschmeyer to speak. Shortly after, Eron was hired into Chobani to work under Leland, who had previously cofounded COLLINS, the design and brand agency most known for their work with Bose, Spotify, and NASA. He joined Chobani as their head of brand and scaled the company from a valuation of $1B to $10B. Eron worked under him to build a bridge between Chobani and the White House for Kamala Harris’s administration.
Part of what makes Eron interesting is how unbelievable and somewhat ridiculous everything he’s ever been involved in is. Example: with Kamala and crew, Eron was tasked with building an entrepreneurial campus for Guatemalan women in the indigenous highlands alongside the founder and CEO of Chobani (this is real).
When Leland left to go back to his brainchild over at Collins, he brought Eron with him as his Chief of Staff. Over the last few years, Eron has grown to Build COLLINS house where he’s now a managing director and executive produces and creative directs the project and programming, end-to-end, with Alex Athanasiou (the two of them are a hive mind).
Under Eron and Alex, Collins house produces the kinds of interdisciplinary convening that Ted talks used to fill. Something to move beyond the format of panels and keynotes with dinners and excursions, etc.
Namely, he leads a Bhutan trip where they spend a week exploring the country via meetings with the king and hearing about future cities they’re building. For example: a mindfulness city that they’re building from scratch (also real) that’s slated to house the first international airport in the country.
He also leads a trip to Ireland where they explore the arts through the land. Because Neither Bhutan nor Ireland was ever colonized, both hold an unbroken lineage of wisdom, learnings, and teachings that stretches back thousands of years. To absorb it all, the group attends plays, culinary schools, and artist workshops.
Eron hand selects a mix of the 20 most interesting people the firm meets every year to attend. Recently that’s included people like Emma Watson, or the founder of Radio City Music Hall, or the head of creative for On Cloud running, or a cool tattoo artist who Eron enjoys being around. He just likes bringing together interesting people to learn and explore together.
At Collins house last week, the head of creative for Coinbase introduced Seal into a panel, his closing words were “Now introducing my friend, not yours, Seal”. Someday I will introduce Eron with the same language and all you hoes will be jealous.
Abena Anim-Somuah, 29, vol 22
Two things I notice in great people: when they carry a notebook and jot things down constantly, and when they change companies to take a job that was carved just for them. Abena is 2/2. She’s also won a James Beard award.
Abena started a dinner series in private dining rooms around nyc. She put together around 40 of them over a year and a half, creating culinary experiences where strangers could meet each other in a way that felt comforting > performative.
Abena was tapped to host The Future of Food is You, a podcast that launched in February 2023, which won her her JBA. She interviewed around 60 chefs and restaurateurs, trying to catch them early on their journeys. She got to host a slate of culinary leaders but also had freedom to flex her ability to platform what she felt was interesting. Example guest: Laura Katz, a scientist who developed a genetically modified version of human breast milk, who Abena interviewed on the pod.
Daly, a well respected creative communications agency operating at the intersection of community and culture, created a job just for her. Their clients include Substack, Yahoo, Pentagram, etc. They successfully poached Abena shortly after she earned her award. Her work there has ranged from dinners and press breakfasts to mixed-media events and brand storytelling. She’s now stepping into a new chapter as an independent consultant. She’s starting with food brands, but her ambition stretches into hospitality and culture more broadly. She also wants to write more (see her Substack here), launch another podcast, and build a practice that lets her move fluidly between media and experience design.
Sam Balaban, 33, vol 27
When Sam was 12, he started a sneaker business. As did many entrepreneurs alike. Sam’e magic skill wasn’t sales, it taking photos of the shoes. Between 21 and 27, Sam was working between Fader and Genius. In his time there, he started picking up freelance projects for Columbia records. In music, he found a niche doing documentary work, notably with rapper Lil Tjay, where he was praised by fans for portraying him in an honest and genuine way.
At Fader, Mac Miller would frequent the office. Sam would take a photo of him and Mac would almost always end up posting it. It gave Sam credibility. In 2018, Mac asked sam to make a video of him rapping to promote his hit Grammy nominated album, Swimming. Sam shot a video and took flics of him on film. The video was called Inertia. Mac passed a month later.
Sam is still close with the Miller family, who recently asked him to direct a documentary to honor the life and musical legacy of Mac.
When Sam works on documentaries, he searches for notes that express a love of life and ability to bring joy to others. He works to showcase Mac’s artistry while he’s immersed in writing or rapping. Drawing a visual connection from Mac to the music.
Sam’s also done a lot for NBA champ and MVP Shai Gilgeous -Alexander with Converse to promote his sneaker. His long term goal is to create documentaries, owning the entire process, from shooting to directing to editing.
3rd Space Update
Being in Cannes showed me the opportunity to build experiences for brands. We’re working on writing a playbook for our hospitality, culinary experience, and bar build out that we can travel with.
Lowlights
Since going full time 3rd space I’ve missed out on big experiences to have perspective changing insights. My routine has been rather 1-dimensional, which has kept me comfortable in my thinking
Haven’t had a proper 3rd Space dinner in 2 months. I’m itchin’ for it…
Asks
Leads on a new venue to be our home
A trusted non-profit lawyer
Going into July
Lots of R&D building out our food and bev service
Working out logistics of hosting a recurring party in nyc for past guests. Working to maximize opportunities for our people to meet
We’re building tech so when someone comes to a dinner, they also get log in information to have access to my entire 3rd Space CRM and request intros or post job opportunities
Expect 2 posts from our social studies Substack section (next one tomorrow)
Working on an artist grants program, inspired by Sean Thielen Esparza
If you’re a brand and want access to a highly curated community of founders, artists, musicians, executives, designers, creators, and cultural leaders, I’d love to chat.
Cheers,
Jake
Excellent update featuring two of the greats Eron and Abena no less!!!
Always a blast to read these updates. Thanks :)