Cannes 101 — Conveo Team Guide

Section 1

Key locations

The venues that matter, what happens there, and what to know before you arrive.

Central hub

Palais des Festivals

The beating heart of Cannes Lions. Red carpet, Grand Théâtre Lumière (2,300 seats), press conferences, Marché du Film. Everything radiates from here. Located at the western end of La Croisette.

📍 1 Boulevard de la Croisette

The promenade

La Croisette

The iconic seafront boulevard. Hotel lobbies, brand activations, yacht parties, spontaneous networking. The highest-density zone runs between the Palais and the Carlton.

📍 Boulevard de la Croisette

Marché du Film

Riviera / Lérins

Exhibition floors adjacent to the Palais where companies set up booths. Where B2B business actually happens. The Bistrot du Lérins inside has ocean views — ideal for a working lunch.

📍 Lérins, Level -1

Badge collection

Gare Maritime / Pantiero

Collect your badge here the moment you arrive — before anything else. Bring your accreditation confirmation. Queues grow fast in the first two days. Automatic dispensers also at Pantiero.

📍 Jetée Albert-Édouard

Key hotels

Carlton · Majestic · Martinez

Not just hotels — their lobbies and terraces function as unofficial deal rooms. Knowing the layout saves time. Carlton is mid-Croisette; Majestic near the Palais; Martinez at the far eastern end.

📍 All on La Croisette

Our base

Yacht Row

Behind the Palais at Jetée Albert-Édouard. Our yacht is here. Samsung and others have permanent yachts nearby. The yacht is the best environment for focused client entertainment.

📍 Jetée Albert-Édouard

Section 2

Understanding the layout

How the city is structured, what each zone means, and how to move between them.

⚠

The golden rule: End-to-end along La Croisette is 30–60 minutes on foot in intense June heat. Every day needs breathing room between meetings, talks, and events. Back-to-back scheduling without travel time is how days fall apart.

The Cannes Lions Atlas — real map

The Cannes Lions Atlas — numbered map of all key venues along La Croisette

Four parallel zones — west to east

Zone 1 · Sea side

🌊 The Mediterranean & Yacht Row

Yachts including our base at Jetée Albert-Édouard, Samsung's permanent yacht, and others. High-quality client entertainment. Controlled environment.

Zone 2 · Beach

🏖 Brand beaches

Meta (20), Google (22), Spotify (24), Pinterest (27), and many more. Free with sign-up registration. No festival pass needed. Talks, panels, networking — variable quality.

Zone 3 · Boulevard

🛣 La Croisette

The main road. Baking hot in late June with almost no shade. How you get everywhere. Budget 15–20 min between any two locations and bring water.

Zone 4 · Behind

🏢 Hotels, apartments, rooftops

Carlton, Majestic, Martinez and side streets. Smaller agencies host talks in rented apartments. GroupM rooftop and others. Evening parties concentrated here.

Key to the Croisette — hotels & buildings

1

Hotel Belle Plage

Marketing Vanguard Inspiration Excursion

2

La Paillote Gastounette

Intuit Salon Dinner with ADWEEK

3

New York New York

Brandwatch Breakfast with ADWEEK

4

La Pantiero

Amazon

5

Yacht Row ★ Our base

Behind the Palais, Jetée Albert-Édouard

6

Palais des Festivals

Cannes Lions — main ticketed venue

7

The Majestic (AdweekHouse)

Accenture, Adobe, ADWEEK, Instacart

8

Le Gray D'Albion

She Runs It with ADWEEK

9

Mondrian

Heap, Infillion

10

JW Marriott

Netflix, Snap

11

Carlton

GWM, DWI, LinkedIn, TikTok

12

Martinez

Disney, Nielsen, TF1

13

The Gutter Bar ★

Far east end — 11pm to 3am nightly

Beaches & cabanas — numbered west to east

14

15

MediaLink

16

Dentsu

17

Lionshouse

18

Brand village

19

Tubi

20

Activities & the daily rhythm

A good Cannes day runs from 6am to 3am. Here's how to pace it.

The day arc

6–8am

Morning run or yoga ★ Most underrated slot

5k runs along the Croisette, yoga on the beach. Fresh air, sober minds, genuine conversations. Some of the best connections at Cannes happen here — the crowd is senior and open. Bring kit. Do this at least once.

8–9am

Breakfast meetings

People are alert, sober, and genuinely present. Often more productive than anything later in the day. The Carlton lobby and hotel terraces fill up — arrive 10 minutes early to secure a spot.

9am–6pm

Speaker sessions, beach events, client meetings

Mix of Palais keynotes (ticketed, air-conditioned), brand beach talks (free sign-up), and scheduled meetings in cafés and hotel lobbies. Build travel time between everything. Be selective — 2–3 sessions per day is better than rushing between all of them.

3–5pm

The reset window — highly recommended

Many people quietly disappear, go back to their hotel, nap, shower, and return fresh around sunset. This is strategy, not laziness. The best part of the day is still ahead. Recharge your social battery.

6–9pm

Rooftop bars, agency events, yacht time

GroupM rooftop, hosted apartment events, client time on the yacht. More curated than the Gutter Bar — worth attending when you can get in. RSVP in advance for these.

9pm–12am

Dinners, parties, brand evenings

Invite-only dinners, brand-hosted evening events, agency parties. Spontaneous invites happen here — say yes when you can. Some companies (e.g. System1) take guests off-Croisette entirely to villas in the hills above Cannes for cocktails and wind-down.

11pm–3am

The Gutter Bar

Where everyone ends up. Open networking, no agenda. Show up, stay present, have real conversations.

The Cannes network effect

Cannes is not just about the events on your calendar. A huge part of the value comes from being in the right place at the right time — and that happens through people. The person you meet on a morning run introduces you to someone at a beach talk, who invites you to a rooftop that evening. Keep your energy up, keep saying yes, and leave room in every day for things that weren't planned.

Section 4

Setting expectations

Be honest with yourself — Cannes is unlike any other work trip. Here's what success actually looks like.

Why we go — three reasons

A

Learn

Feed your brain. Understand what competitors and clients are doing, what's new in the industry, and what conversations everyone is having this year. Come back with something to say.

B

Network spontaneously

Have real conversations. Understand people. Meet the person next to you in the queue, at the bar, at a morning run. This is where lasting relationships are built.

C

Get meetings in — but be realistic

Scheduled meetings happen, but Cannes is a relationship trip, not a sales trip. The meetings that matter often happen spontaneously, not from a calendar invite.

The honest numbers

25–35%

of scheduled meetings that happen exactly as planned

~65–75%

shift to a café later, the Gutter Bar, or another day — and that's fine

0

times a no-show means rudeness — it almost never does

What the team needs to understand

⚠

Don't take no-shows personally. If someone confirms and doesn't show, they are almost certainly stuck on the other side of the beach, in a queue, or melting in the heat. It's half an hour to walk from one end to the other. Follow up, stay flexible, reschedule.

✓

Flexibility is the skill. The team that does best at Cannes adapts on the fly — reroutes, reschedules, says yes to something unexpected, and makes it work.

→

Spontaneous beats scheduled. Sitting next to someone at a talk, a queue at the bar, a morning run — this is how real Cannes connections are made. Don't be so focused on your calendar that you miss them.

→

Speakers are hard to reach on the fly. You can try to meet a speaker before or after their session, but be realistic — it is very difficult without a pre-arranged introduction. Follow them, engage online, play the long game.

🚢

The yacht on Sunday — use it well. Because it falls before the week's full madness, people will be present, unhurried, and genuinely open to conversation. Ask where people are going during the week so you can find them again. Ask non-work questions. The goal: leave the yacht with 3–5 people you have a genuine reason to see again.

💬

Keep a team WhatsApp running all week

As you move between venues, share your location and next stop in the group. If you're leaving Meta Beach and heading to apartment drinks, post it — someone else on the team might be five minutes away and can inherit the connection you're leaving behind. Pass your thread. Everything is walkable, and a heads-up in the group means a warm introduction doesn't go cold.

Section 5

Dress code

Not a suit. Not a swimsuit. Right in the middle.

👔

Suits & formal

Nobody wears these. You'll overheat and stand out for the wrong reasons.

Leave at home

👕

Shorts, t-shirts, dresses

This is the Cannes uniform. Smart-casual, breathable, and comfortable. You'll be walking a lot in serious heat.

The vibe ✓

🩱

Beach / swim gear

You're not on holiday. Vests and swim shorts aren't appropriate for meetings and events.

Not appropriate

✓

Comfortable shoes matter more than anything. You are walking 30–60 minutes in 30°C heat across uneven surfaces. Prioritise this above all other clothing decisions.

☀

Pack sunscreen and a water bottle. La Croisette has almost no shade. You will burn and dehydrate faster than you expect. Both are non-negotiable.

→

Evenings can be slightly smarter. Rooftop bars, agency dinners, and beach parties can warrant a step up — but still no suits. A clean shirt or a nice dress is more than enough.

💤 The mid-afternoon reset — highly recommended

A lot of people quietly disappear around 3–5pm, go back to their hotel, nap, shower, and return fresh around sunset. This is not laziness — it's strategy. Cannes is a marathon, not a sprint. If you come back fresh at 6pm rather than running on fumes from 9am, you'll make far better use of the evening. Recharge your social battery. The best part of the day is still ahead of you.

Section 6

Social presence & thought leadership

Making Cannes work beyond the week — how we show up publicly and turn conversations into briefs.

💡

The Conveo perspective: One of the most powerful things we can do is compare notes after the week and write up a collective point of view — the trends we heard repeatedly, what clients and competitors are focused on, and what it means for the industry. That kind of joined-up thought leadership lands far better than any individual post. It's credible, specific, and it shows we were genuinely in the room.

Three ways to do this

1

Live from Cannes — real-time posts during the week

Share what you're hearing, learning, and seeing as it happens. Short observations, session takeaways, photos from the beach or yacht. Shows presence and builds momentum while the festival is live.

2

The collective debrief — compare notes as a team after the week

Everyone brings their observations together. What were the three themes that came up again and again? What are businesses and brands focused on right now? What did Cannes tell us about where the industry is heading? Written up as a single Conveo point of view — this is the strongest output we can produce.

3

Client share — what we learned, from our perspective

Send a version to clients and prospects. "Here's what we took away from Cannes and how we see it applying to the industry." Positions us as informed, present, and worth talking to. A warm way to reopen conversations with people we met during the week — and turn those into briefs.

What to capture during the week

✓

Themes that came up in multiple conversations or sessions

✓

Specific things clients or prospects said about their priorities and ambitions

✓

What competitors were talking about or showing up with

✓

Any session quotes or ideas that genuinely surprised you

✓

Names and context of people worth following up with — and what was said

Outputs to aim for

💼

LinkedIn posts

Individual team members sharing live observations and session takeaways during the week.

📄

Cannes debrief article

A single joined-up piece representing Conveo's view of the festival — trends, themes, what it means.

✉️

Client email

Personalised send to clients and warm prospects — "here's what we saw, here's what it means for you."

🤝

Follow-up conversations

Use the debrief as a reason to re-engage anyone we met — turns a Gutter Bar chat into a brief.