When you’re an advertising creative, the Cannes Lions Festival is the best place on Earth. You can meet creative talents, see the world’s best work and party after a year of hard work.

The problem: because of the recent recession, DDB couldn’t send its creatives over this year. So we (Matthieu, Marc, Olivier, Paul, Laurent, Benjamin and Alexis), seven creatives from the agency, all went for a beer, and after a few beers, came back with a solution: Autarky Project, the idea that could send seven creatives to Cannes. How? By asking all our clients for their products for free, we could go to the Cannes Lions Festival and live there for one whole week, without spending a single dime. Whatever the outcome, it’s good to know that Michel Huppert, our Chief Financial Officer, thinks it’s the best idea he has ever seen in his entire career.

We produced content every week to motivate our clients and gain new fans. And soon, we got fans from 20 different countries, all supporting the project. Those many supporters helped us convince our clients to join the project. And the more clients joining the project we had, the more fans we gained. And the more fans we gained… Well you got it. At the exact moment we’re writing these lines, we already have fans from 20 different countries and 21 clients who happily joined the Autarky Project.

We’re still collecting products from our clients so we hope we will get to Cannes, but we already turned this simple idea into a unique self-promotion campaign, allowing us to show the world DDB Paris has a large amount of clients, covering many markets, from automotive to food, communications or holiday club resorts. Enough clients to travel and live in autarky.

At the exact moment we’re writing these lines, we’re still collecting products from our clients so we hope we will get to Cannes, but we already turned this simple idea into a unique self-promotion campaign.

We have fans from 20 different countries and 21 clients who happily joined the Autarky Project. We showed that DDB Paris has a large amount of clients, enough clients to travel and live in autarky, we grew its Facebook fan base by a third and created more than 100 000 post impressions in only two months. And more importantly, we reinforced our relationship with our clients and prove once again that whatever the problem, DDB Paris can find a creative solution to it.To know if we made it to Cannes, get the result live from Sunday, June 19th by logging on to: facebook.com/autarkyproject or looking for us on the Croisette.