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I spent last week in Cannes for my first ever Lions and am still too jet-lagged to type anything too highminded about the festival. But here are 5 conclusions I walked away with:

1. Digital is the core of every Integrated campaign. It’s simply too powerful and offers up too many tools to play an incidental role any more. I’m not saying that most campaigns out there use digital effectively. I’m just saying that those impressive enough to win a top Lion will largely be earning that honor based on a central role for online and/or mobile. Even though the Obama campaign, this year’s Grand Prix Integrated winner, was largely grass-roots focused, it was still MyBarackObama.com as well as strong presences across social media channels that added scale and organization (and brought in the cash).

2. “Interactive is becoming less about the computer”. I’m sure I bastardized the quote but Lars Bastholm, who led this year’s Cyber jury said something similar to that and I could not agree more.The best work in interactive media is becoming less about impressing with fancy technology and more about facilitating things people want or had previously never dreamed of. Campaigns like Best Job in the World and Fiat Eco Drive really illustrated this.

I’m sick of bad customer service. It seems like I’m always dealing with giant conglomerate X and their horrible customer (dis)service infrastructure. I have to believe that No Doubt’s was written by a customer service agent at a call center:

You think that we connect
That the chemistry’s correct
Your words walk right through my ears
Presuming I like what I hear

Sorry I’m not home right now
I’m walking into interwebs
So leave a message
And I’ll call you back

But it’s truly refreshing when good customer service triumphs over evil. Like my recent experience with Bank of America.

We recently collaborated with our Hewlett-Packard clients, Scott Berg, Director of Digital Strategy, and Michael Mendenhall, Chief Marketing Officer, to create the video below. It focuses on the trends that are influencing digital media and services. Mendenhall included it in his presentation this week at Cannes.

The challenge in creating this video was to step back and take a macro view—how broad trends in demography, economics and technology are shaping the digital landscape.

The statistics included are eye-opening, and we found ourselves at multiple points in the discovery process taking moments to reflect—on the scale of these figures, the surprise factors and the implications.

A big Thank You to our clients at HP for inviting us to participate in this initiative.

With just a few choice words this past weekend, my three year old nephew broke my heart….and my tech ego.

Let me set the stage for you. My sister and nephew picked me up at the airport (which is easy to do when it’s one hanger on the far south west edge of town) and just before I arrived, they were deep in conversation around the meaning of the word ‘embarrassing’ or more accurately, the proper use of said word.

I should insert a disclaimer here– my nephew is wicked smart and I don’t just say that because we’re related.

It’s that time of the year, where the gaming industry puts its best foot forward and shows off the newest gear, the latest innovations, and, of course, the best games you’ll be playing over the next 365 days. The Electronic Entertainment Expo came roaring back to life in Los Angeles this past month and Denuo’s gaming expertise was there to take it all in.