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Ticket to Cannes

Marissa Liu

Get accepted to Brandcenter? Check.

Be selected for a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the South of France? Check.

First-year experience designer Marissa Liu was selected to attend the Roger Hatchuel Student Academy in June 2021, a component of the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes, France. The selection process is extremely competitive; only 40 students from around the world are chosen to attend.

The Roger Hatchuel Student Academy is a unique learning experience designed to help students interested in pursuing a creative path in advertising launch their careers. Selected candidates learn first-hand from the world’s greatest brands, creative minds and industry leaders. The Academy will take place June 21-25, 2021 at the Cannes Lions Festival: the largest festival for creative communications, advertising, and related fields.

Check out Marissa’s award-winning video submission below.

What are you looking forward to most about the Academy and Cannes?Marissa: Attending the Roger Hatchuel Academy is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m incredibly humbled and honored to represent my school and my country this fall. I love meeting new people and learning new perspectives, and I’m most excited to meet the rest of the students in my class who will be coming from all different countries. Especially in a time like this, it’s important to build community and solidarity together, because those relationships will certainly carry us forward later down the road. The Cannes Lions Festival carries so much weight and respect, and I cannot wait to see what the leaders have planned and the vision they see for our industry moving forward.

What do you hope to take away from the experience?Marissa: I’m excited to live and learn! Attending the Academy isn’t just an experience for myself personally, it’s also a chance to take the knowledge I learn in Cannes and bring it back home to the States to share with my #brandfam. I’m looking forward to seeing how the lessons I learn through the program will apply to the work I do next year at Brandcenter.