For Cannes Lions Festival, MSLGROUP Launches Real-time Conversation Platform www.cannescentrale.com With Celebrity Reporter @badbanana

PARIS, June 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Twitter Star at Heart of Reddit-like Mobile Site That Allows Delegates and Non-delegates to Be Everywhere, All the Time, at Cannes

MSLGROUP, Publicis Groupe's speciality communications and engagement network today launches http://www.cannescentrale.com, a fully mobile conversation platform, curated by the public. American blogger Tim Siedell - considered one of the funniest people on Twitter (@badbanana) by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, TIME magazine and Mashable - heads up a team of roving reporters, setting the tone for a platform designed to provide insight and provoke comment about people, events and deals during the Cannes Lions festival of creativity.  Afraid there's so much going on at Cannes that you'll miss something Eric Schmidt said? Or worse, fall behind on industry gossip outside the infamous Gutter Bar?  Don't worry, MSLGROUP and @badbanana have you covered.

Created for anyone interested in the Lions - festival goers or not - http://www.cannescentrale.com provides a 'Spy Magazine'-like eye on Cannes, with the broader Cannes community effectively the editors: adding content, but also voting up/down existing content so that only the very best surfaces to the top.

Ensuring an all-important level of irreverence and humour on the mobile site is Siedell, a 20-year advertising veteran and award-winning creative director, named one of 21 influencers "reshaping media and marketing in 2011" by Advertising Age.

MSLGROUP CEO Olivier Fleurot commented, "I'm very happy to have Tim on the team: his presence in Cannes, and reporting role for the Centrale project, helps ensure a rich dose of insight, humour and cheek - vital ingredients of course to engage the Cannes audience."

As a precursor to next week's festival - and to help people sift through the multitude of seminars on offer - with characteristic wit Siedell has listed his 'top picks' for the Lions here on the CannesCentrale site.

About http://www.cannescentrale.com

http://www.cannescentrale.com is a fully mobile site, enabling anyone (not only Cannes delegates) with a smartphone to interact with the festival by adding, commenting and sharing thoughts, gossip and pictures via their mobile devices. To add content, visitors will need to create a login, or they can login using their Twitter/Facebook accounts. If visitors to the site wish only to rate existing content, no login is required.

About Tim Siedell

Tim Siedell is a thinker, writer, and retired trombone player (1980-1983) currently living about as far from New York and Los Angeles as you can get at the same time. You can find his work at Funny or Die, in the comedy section of the Huffington Post, and on Twitter as @badbanana.

About MSLGROUP

MSLGROUP is Publicis Groupe's PR, speciality communications and engagement group, advisors in all aspects of communication strategy: from consumer PR to employee communications, from public affairs to reputation management and from crisis communications to event management. Learn more about us at: http://www.mslgroup.com + http://blog.mslgroup.com + Twitter + YouTube.

Contact:
Trudi Harris (Paris) trudi.harris@mslgroup.com  +33(0)6-13-73-83-02
Mike Bush (New York) michael.bush@mslgroup.com +1-212-468-3623
Neelam Banghard (Singapore) neelam.banghard@mslgroup.com +65-6327-0283