"Cannes is about reflecting what's in the marketplace, we're not leading the marketplace. It's important to talk to the market to make sure we're staying relevant and bringing to people what they want to participate in, but I don't believe anyone can say it's an easy process because the state of change is so rapid."

These words from Terry Savage, CEO of the Cannes International Advertising Festival, resonate particularly loudly following the 2006 festival. Last year, a gentle furor erupted around the Titanium Award, which was boldly awarded to Design Barcode, while categorically shunning any and all integrated work. With the definition of Titanium open to interpretation at the time, the jury had an explanation for its decision, which it backed fervently, leaving the hopeful bearers of stellar integrated work with no awards home to call their own and a sting that is likely still felt.

In the spirit of "reflecting the marketplace", and perhaps making up for such an unforeseen wrong, the Cannes Lions have this year created a well-defined Integrated category. "It wasn't appropriate that Cannes did not recognize state-of-the-art integrated," says Savage. "I think there was a scenario that Titanium was about breakthrough work and showing the way forward, and that may or may not have included integrated. So we felt that following that, it needed to be clarified."

While Savage's opening words reflect the necessary change in the awards nomenclature, they also speak to the ever-increasing content offered by the festival. Following last year's bump in content, 2007 offers a mind-boggling and genuinely enticing lineup of 42 seminars and 20 workshops, creating many potential work-play conflicts.

Recognizing the changing state of the industry, the festival is launching new Content Showcase Workshops dedicated to increasingly important aspects of advertising such as mobile, interactive, digital video production, consumer control and branded content.

Says Savage, "This is an important new space in the industry and should be recognized at Cannes. And with all new things, we're starting it off small and will grow it."

Introduced last year, the Workshop series returns with topics ranging from design, radio, online, viral and a particularly interesting session presented by Apple called Brand TV.

Seminar series highlights include a presentation by Y&R, featuring former US vice-president Al Gore (Fri. 5:15pm). Also of note are the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase (Thurs. 11:45am); Black Bag's Diary of a Creative Director (Wed. 12pm), featuring Tony Granger (Saatchi & Saatchi, New York), Marcello Serpa (AlmapBBDO, Brazil) and Erik Vervroegen (TBWA\Paris); R/GA's Third Screen presentation (Wed. 10am); USA Today's User-Generated Content Debate (Thurs. 3pm); and the Cannes Debate on the reinventing the agency model (Fri. 4pm), featuring David Droga (droga5), Jeff Goodby (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), Andrew Robertson (BBDO, NY) and Daniel Morel (Wunderman).

Denoting the changes in the industry are the number of entries. Film category entries were down for the fourth year in a row (4,860, down 7.94% from last year), while overall entries are up 3.2%. "You hear a lot of conversation in the market in relation to things going in different directions, and this confirms the perception."

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