Viacom, Time Warner CEOs to Add Hollywood Flavor to Cannes Ad Festival

A couple of Hollywood CEOs and some big-name creatives are set to descend on Cannes this week, more than a month after the film festival ended in the town on the French Riviera.

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Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes is returning to the Croisette for the annual Cannes Lions advertising festival, and Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman is set to attend for the first time as the two big entertainment executives and their entourages are looking to socialize with ad folks. The festival has over the past two years become a bigger draw for Hollywood folks given an increasing overlap of the content, technology and ad sectors.

Last year, Bewkes, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Murdoch, News Corp.'s deputy COO, appeared at the festival alongside representatives of such technology giants as Facebook and Google.

Dauman will speak at a Thursday seminar entitled "Millennials and the Future of Creativity"that also includes actress-singer Selena Gomez, director/producer Jon Chu (Step Up, G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation) and MTV president Stephen Friedman. Dauman will also attend a dinner with ad clients and executives at a castle in nearby Antibes, a spokesman confirmed a recent Advertising Age report.

"Cannes Lions brings together the biggest thinkers in marketing and media around the best creative work from across the world," Dauman said in a statement. "That's a powerful level of thought leadership you don't get elsewhere, so we feel it's important to contribute to that dialogue."

In his second year at the big annual Cannes gathering, Bewkes will be in town from Tuesday until Thursday and introduce Wednesday fireside chat, "The Passion of Storytelling for Television." It features Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth and writer/director/producer Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City, Two Broke Girls) as speakers. According to the Cannes festival web site, they will discuss "the creative process and the anatomy of a hit series from inception to completion."

The festival runs through June 23.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com
Twitter: @georgszalai