Tech Talk: Lions Innovation Festival at Cannes

Cannes Lions is continuously searching for the next hot thing

LINK BIG founder and CEO Nadav Raviv. His company has developed a smart link that quickly locates the website of a product or item of interest (photo credit: LINK BIG)
LINK BIG founder and CEO Nadav Raviv. His company has developed a smart link that quickly locates the website of a product or item of interest
(photo credit: LINK BIG)
If you were a French seagull hovering in the sky looking down on the Cannes Lions Innovation Festival in the French Riviera last week, you would have seen the Facebook Beach, the Pinterest Postcard Wall, the SnapChat Wheel, the Instagram Carpet, and even a billboard that reads, “We’ll make a short video clip of your tweet.” As you can see, social networking is taking over the advertising industry.
The most famous recent campaigns are Fearless Girl in New York, which received 4.6 billion hits on Twitter; Tide’s “Did you notice the stain on Terry Bradshaw’s shirt during the Super Bowl?” got 4.8 billion hits on Twitter; and the French “Like my addiction” Instagram campaign, which received 1 billion hits and was an eye-opener to educate the public about addiction.
Cannes Lions is continuously searching for the next hot thing: in the Discovery Zone of Cannes Lions Innovation, and eight of the top global start-ups were chosen in the end. Here they are:
eBrandValue – The incubator that produced AirBnB and Twitch, has now created eBrandValue, which analyses social data regarding brands and creates marketing insight so that we can learn what is or is not effective brand marketing.
Gamee – Four million users are already using a gamers social network called Gamee. This is a place where you can share new top records, tips, tricks, and cheats that will help you get to the next stage of a game, and even flatter your opponent.
Style Counsel – The British app Style Counsel lets women share ideas for outfits with each other and recommend what style clothing should be worn to work, dates, and parties, etc.
Hashtag’d – How do you turn people’s selfies into marketing content? Hashtag’d lets you tell your brand’s story with photos, video and social media posts by aggregating, curating and leveraging content from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Lobster – Download fresh visual content from social media users with royalty free licenses. Larger than other UGC libraries and more authentic than photo banks. Affordable pricing plans for everyone.
The Source – Pinterest for talent. You are an advertising agency searching for talented individuals who can do amazing things with Instagram on the topic of, say…pizza. All you have to do is go to The Source website and type in the word pizza and straight away you’ll receive visual feed from Instagram from around the world and you’ll have your pick of who you want to work with.
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Tokywoky – Imagine that you just walked into a store in the mall, picked up a shirt and went into a changing room to try it on. When you come out to look in the mirror, you might ask the saleswoman or any person next to you, “How does this look?” Well, from now on, you can do this from the convenience of your home by shopping online at Tokywoky and chatting with other users. You can discuss prices, trends, outfits.
Link Big – Are you frustrated that there are no links in your Instagram and you can’t see the fashion item in your feed anymore? From now on, Link Big can take you straight to the website of the item you were interested in. What this smart link does is locate the website of the product you were just looking at.
Cybereason – Israeli cyber security company Cybereason has raised $100 million in a series D financing round from Japan’s SoftBank. This is the company’s fourth financing round, which, together with previous rounds of financing over the past two years, reaches a total of $200m. Cybereason was founded in 2012 by CEO Lior Div, CTO Yonatan Striem-Amit, and CVO Yossi Naar, all veterans of the IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit. The company employs 250 people in its R&D center in Tel Aviv, and also has offices in Boston, Tokyo and London.
Cybereason’s system enables enterprises to substantially reduce the response time required to locate a cyber attack, identifying both known and unknown malicious activity. “This financing round will enable us to continue expanding through distribution channels,” says Div. “Softbank is a tremendously powerful corporation in Japan, as well in the global market, and this partnership will enable us to continue expanding our presence in the global cyber security market. We are very excited about this, but will never rest on our laurels, and will be prepared for any future attack.
Ken Miyauchi, President and CEO, SoftBank Corp. says: “Cybereason’s products are truly amazing. SoftBank tested a number of cybersecurity products from all over the world, but Cybereason’s products are by far better than those of their competitors. We strongly believe Cybereason will be one of the global leaders in cybersecurity.”
If you run a young startup, have developed an interesting app or have a question, please feel free to contact info@social-wisdom.com.
Translated by Hannah Hochner.