Michael Roth Welcome

This year, at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, IPG once again saw very strong performance from a broad range of work and across a wide array of agencies. This year, IPG agencies took home 156 honors, including 35 Gold, 45 Silver, 74 Bronze and many, many shortlisted works from around the world. FCB Inferno and The Martin Agency both took home Grand Prix honors, and R/GA was named the Festival’s agency of the year-the first time an IPG agency has received this honor in over a decade.  What is more, Bob Greenberg, Founder and CEO of R/GA received the Lion of St. Mark-the Festival’s top honor.

And while the focus of the Festival is of course the creative work, which we discussed with the Wall Street Journal and Campaign during the week, Cannes also provides a global stage for IPG and our agencies to share with the industry what we find important and what makes our company special.

For our holding company, that continues to be our focus on the advancement of women into leadership positions across the organization. This year we convened 350 delegates, members of the press, colleagues, clients and advocates for the fifth annual IPG women’s breakfast, which has become a high point for both our company and Festival attendees. This year’s event, entitled “Small Bytes, Big Leaps: Wired Women on Winning in the Digital World,” focused on technology and creativity. Panelists included top marketers from AOL, GE, Intel and Microsoft, as well as agency leaders from McCann, R/GA, Huge and FCB. Special guests included the BBC’s Zeinab Badawi and writer-editor-producer Tina Brown. Check out the videos here.