Two Days, One Hotel, and a 30-Minute Changeover for SIGNAL at Cannes Lions

A Year of Options, a Venue Worth Waiting For

The search began with the grandest addresses in town, including a palace hotel on the Croisette, before converging on Hotel Le Suquet: private, characterful, walkable from the Palais, and flexible enough to host brunch, panels, and everything in between across its restaurant, veranda, and patio.

Through the year of planning, Eventflare's manager ran every detail with the client's team in the US, from menu selection (smoked salmon focaccia hearts, mini sesame burgers, and a vegan pissaladiere secured after a dietary check) to the fresh flowers on the tables, guest timing across time zones, and the branding plan: a three-metre banner for the outside fencing, roll-up banners for the rooms, and the SIGNAL logo on the reception screens.

The Choreography Problem

Here is the part guests never see. During Lions week, Hotel Le Suquet was hosting another organisation's programme in the same spaces on the same days, meaning SIGNAL's events had to land in a venue that was changing hands to the minute.

Eventflare's production lead turned that risk into a schedule:

1. A full production plan and floorplans for both days, walked through with the venue line by line
2. A 30-minute window on day one to move the screen and projector to the patio before the brunch opened at noon
3. A day-two transition designed around hospitality rather than herding: catering pre-set on the patio so the earlier event's guests would drift there naturally while the veranda flipped to SIGNAL Sessions
4. AV installed the night before, with the supplier bringing in an extra 55 inch screen at 11:30 PM to keep event day clean, and Eventflare pushing the venue to soften the additional set-up fee that the shared calendar had forced on the client
5. Mini bus shuttles for guests, with drop-off and pick-up points agreed with the venue, and signage titles specified word for word so nobody wandered into the wrong event

Results and Impact

Across two festival days, SIGNAL got exactly what a Cannes Lions presence should be: an intimate leadership brunch in the June sun, a sessions day with proper staging, branding from the street fence to the reception screen, and transport that made an old town address effortless.

None of the seams showed. The screen moved on time, the changeovers held, and the programme ran to its schedule in one of the most contested venues of the week.

Wrapping Up

Cannes Lions rewards early planners, but a year of preparation still comes down to thirty-minute windows on the day. This project had both ends covered: a manager who shaped the event with the client across twelve months, and a production lead who choreographed a shared venue down to the minute. That is what it takes to own a room in Cannes, even when you are sharing it.

Planning a festival-week event of your own? Browse Eventflare's venues in Cannes to see what's available.

Managed by Lara Gonçalves

Head of Event Production, Eventflare

Lara guided the project across its full year: sourcing and securing the venue, shaping menus, branding, and guest logistics with the client's US team, with production on the days led alongside Eventflare's Head of Event Production.