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Creativity at its best at Cannes Lions

Shahriar Shahid
THE Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012, the biggest and most prestigious celebration of creativity in communication and marketing, kicked off yesterday at the film city of Cannes in France.
The festival is an annual meeting place for communication professional, advertisers, marketers, industry leaders and frontline thinkers for the ultimate celebration of global creativity in marketing and communication.
This is the 59th year of the festival where creative communication awards will be given in 15 diversified categories.
Starting from traditional media communication platform to emerging mobile, social media, branded content and entertainment, all communication platforms come under the award categories.
This year a record number of entries — 34,301 creative communications -- have been submitted for awards, which is nearly 20 percent higher than the previous year.
More than 11,000 delegates from 90 countries are joining the seven-day festival that will end on June 23. There will with award programmes, screening and showcasing of creative entries, stimulating conferences, workshops and seminars by industry leaders and world celebrities.
The winners for the 15 categories will be awarded the prestigious "Lions Trophy" in four award programmes.
World renowned celebrities like Ben Stiller, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, actor and activist Bob Geldof, former US President
Bill Clinton, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Yoko Ono and many more are joining this years' Cannes Lions in different programmes.
The increasing participation of creative entries is the sign that this robust communication industry is growing in lightning speed through creativity and new technology, said Phillip Thomas, chief executive officer of Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
"And this trend is strongly evident in the new "Mobile and branded content & entertainment lions" category while traditional media is also evolving through creativity and new ways in engaging with their audience. I am sure that once again the winners of Cannes Lions will inspire and excite the industry, showing what is possible in creative brand communi-
cation."
Apart from media agencies and media production companies, the increasing number of marketing professionals and technology companies has marked a significant character for this years' Cannes festival.
As most of the companies started to focus on 'Creativity' as the tool for competitive advantage, marketers and technology companies is now working hand in hand during this creative revolution.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Tweeter, Apple, Facebook and many more technology companies are participating at the Cannes this year as these technology companies are profoundly changing people's communication behaviour and companies like Unilever, Pepsi, P&G and Coca-Cola increasingly see their business potentials in peo-
ple plus technology.
The Daily Star is the official media representative for Bangladesh at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012 and Bangladesh Brand Forum is the country representative for Bangladesh for this event.
Bangladesh Brand Forum arranged the Bangladesh Chapter of 'Young Lions' for creativity in communication and two winners from Bangladesh is joining this year's 'Young Lions' competition and presenting their work in front of the most influential creative professionals of the world.
The Daily Star will bring this global celebration of creativity to Bangladesh audience and promote its presence at the Cannes.
Shahriar Shahid is the manager for marketing and business development of The Daily Star.