First newsletter: real talk from Cannes

Happy Friday!

Excited to finally launch my weekly newsletter where I can help you go deeper, learn more and win in your market.

I had a crazy week at Cannes Lions. I'll be honest, the first day I had a lot of self-hating thoughts–I wasn't organized enough, did I attend the right event, am I connecting with the right people? It was overwhelming. But then I sat down with someone I really respected and he put it all into perspective.

If you meet 3-4 great connections at Cannes, you did it right. In that moment I realized, the best part of Cannes is enjoying the chaos and finding serendipity within that. That made me chill out, find my groove, and truly enjoy the process. And I ended up meeting way more than four great people. What I love about Cannes is that everyone is so primed and open, you can be standing outside and end up in a real conversation with the CMO and they are excited to shoot the shit. It's very hard to find prestigious people unguarded. A new friend I met at Cannes sat across from Oprah at dinner nightly and they waved everyday, shared outfit inspo, and chatted as humans. Cannes is really a special place.

Outside of good connections, I loved the talks. Two of my favourites were Mel Robbins & Mark Ritson, and Byron Sharp. (Byron Sharp wrote How Brands Grow, an awesome marketing book you should read if you are in CPG.)

Mel Robbins was the first standout. Her whole framework comes down to two questions she runs every decision through:

1. Who is it for
2. What is it for

Who is it for? One person. "It's for the person standing in front of me in line at the grocery store," she said. A real human she knows intimately, because it's a version of who she used to be, $800,000 in debt and starting over.

What is it for? Impact. As she put it, "I don't want to be smarter than you. I want to make an impact."

This comes down to problem-matching. What is the problem you are solving, why does it matter, and whose problem is it? This is a simple marketing principle that's at the heart of all great brands, but we forget simple in a sea of changing algorithms and new platforms.

It was a good reminder that if you want to scale you have to obsess over these two questions. When one person feels truly seen, they feel inclined to share your content, brand, product with someone else–it’s how you go viral. As she said, "many come from serving the one." It made me rethink how many brands chase growth by getting broader, when the smartest one in the room did it by getting impossibly specific.

The other one that rewired my brain a little was Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp, on the difference between mental availability and purchase availability. Mental availability is whether your brand comes to mind when someone's in a buying moment, and as Ritson put it, nail that and "70 to 80% of your job has been done." Purchase availability is catching the small group ready to buy right now. The reframe for me: only about 5% of your audience is in the market today, the other 95% aren't, so you have to build for both.

This is relevant because you have to constantly serve two different mindsets; it's what makes marketing & branding different. Branding is for mental availability–you have to stay top of mind so that when someone is ready to buy (purchase availability), they are already thinking of you. Whereas purchase availability is the sale–this is marketing which focuses on conversion. That's why I focus on the Social Media & Brand Planner through the lens of the marketing funnel. You need both top of funnel awareness (branding) and mid to lower funnel conversion techniques (marketing) to sell. Without understanding the difference between the two and what your customers need at each stage, your efforts won't be effective.

I am very excited to diarize my own thoughts and learnings weekly for you to help you grow. Thank you for being with me on this journey.

This week I got to sit down with Isabelle d'Ornano, co-founder of Sisley and the woman they called the Countess of Cosmetics. I loved this conversation, she dropped so much wisdom and I left taking notes. She built a brand that's lasted generations on a principle most companies have forgotten: you sell what's in the jar, not the jar.

We get into:

● The starting decision that set Sisley apart from everyone else
● How a simple request from friends turned into a 10-year project: the Sisleÿa cream
● Why they leaned into advertising it as "the most expensive sunscreen in the world"
● How Sisley was the first to launch global anti-aging, before the industry even had a name for it
● Where the hand-drawn flower and that iconic purple actually came from

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