Chapter 158: Staying On
Chapter 158: Staying On
[Cannes wasn’t the end… Ryu Sunho attends “Cannes Lions” right after the Palme d’Or]
[The man who walks Cannes twice, Ryu Sunho… from film festival to ad festival]
[Why did an actor head to an ad festival… the background behind Ryu Sunho’s Cannes ad festival attendance?]
No one expected Ryu Sunho’s next move.
Before the heat of the Cannes Film Festival even had time to cool, he was attending the world’s largest advertising celebration, Cannes Lions, held right next door.
This was how it happened.
Three months earlier.
Content Trinity’s executive director office.
Han Seungwoo was scanning the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s performance report.
—Change in “organ donation” search volume after Episode 10 of “Doctor Princess” aired: up 5,200% year-on-year
—Age distribution of new organ donation registrants: 20s–30s at 68%
—Survey reason for registering: “content influence” response rate: 92%
“Huh… the more I look at it, the more insane it is.”
Han Seungwoo clicked his tongue while looking at the numbers.
He had never seen a public-interest campaign generate ripple like this.
This is the kind of thing you only see as a special success case when you study marketing in the U.S. You don’t actually see it in real life.
It wasn’t just raising awareness about organ donation.
It drove real social behavioral change.
And it became a definite benefit for our company too.
Not only the intangible value of “good influence,” but also tangible results like the drama’s success, and beyond that, it created a point of contact with the policy sphere.
How the hell did that bastard Ryu Sunho come up with this… I’m curious what’s inside his head, but I can’t exactly crack it open.
He was chewing on it and admiring it alone when Han Seungwoo suddenly snapped his fingers.
“Right. This isn’t something to just admire and move on.”
If something was done well, virtue meant bragging about it far and wide.
And if you were going to brag, you didn’t brag to the neighborhood—you bragged to the whole world.
Domestic award shows don’t hit hard enough. You have to play in the big water.
That left only one thing.
The Cannes ad festival.
If we win at Cannes, we can carve our company’s name into global marketers’ heads for sure. Then we can create new IP investments and overseas co-production opportunities…
A chain of possibilities unfolded in his mind.
For expanding Content Trinity’s global influence, it was a perfect picture.
And above all—
This is a positive result I can bring to my father.
The moment the thought extended that far, Han Seungwoo urgently called in the company’s key executives.
“Form an awards-festival task force team and submit the ‘Doctor Princess’ campaign to Cannes. Make a case film and a presentation board too. I don’t need to explain—you know what that is, right?”
The PR director nodded as their eyes met.
In truth, he didn’t know exactly, but if he admitted that now, it was obvious Han Seungwoo would curse him out, so he nodded first.
The moment the meeting ended, he ran back to his office and started Googling.
[Case film: a video under 2 minutes summarizing the campaign’s problem, idea, execution, and results]
[Presentation board: a one-page board organizing the campaign’s key insights, key visual, and performance]
After that, the materials—completed through the blood, sweat, and sleeplessness of employees ground down day and night—landed on Han Seungwoo’s desk.
“Mm. The polish is decent. Good work.”
Han Seungwoo handed the PR director a corporate card as a “good job,” then immediately plotted the next step.
He dug up knowledge he had abandoned in the back of his head from his U.S. study-abroad days.
This can’t be a Content Trinity solo submission. It has to be a joint submission with the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
If Content Trinity went alone, it would smell commercial, diluting the public-interest aspect.
If the ministry went alone, it would look bureaucratic and stiff, making it hard to hook the judges’ interest.
A joint submission completed the frame of an “ideal collaboration between a public institution and a content company,” and Cannes would rate it highly.
And the most important thing.
The idea had been Ryu Sunho’s.
So they couldn’t leave him out.
We need to pitch Ryu Sunho’s position not as a mere actor, but as a co-designer of the story. That’s how the unexpectedness gets evaluated highly.
A story where an actor personally held social awareness and planned the campaign.
There was no better “unexpectedness” to whet judges’ appetites.
Once he finished organizing it, Han Seungwoo immediately picked up his phone and called the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s head of public relations.
“Hello. This is Han Seungwoo, Executive Director at Content Trinity. I have a proposal… are you interested in Cannes?”
That was how he bulldozed it through.
While staying in Cannes, I checked local reactions in the gaps.
…Yeah. It’s exploding.
The local press had gotten pretty heated over the Cannes Film Festival results.
Cannes was conservative and authoritative by nature, and they had broken traditions and iron rules they’d kept for over twenty years, so it was bound to get noisy.
[Did Cannes collapse its own authority? Controversy over radical double wins]
[Cannes claimed there were no exceptions, yet broke its own principle]
[Cannes’ rule was broken. Innovation, or compromise?]
Some people were raising their voices, criticizing it as a stupid move that destroyed the honor and prestige Cannes had built.
Because of that, even an explanatory interview from the jury president, John Nicholson, went up.
—It was not a compromise. It was respect for art. If we watched Ryu’s acting and still did not give him an award, we judged that would be what truly damaged Cannes’ authority…
The issue kept heating up, but I didn’t take it too seriously.
I had a grounded reason.
The critics who actually watched our film at Cannes didn’t join the condemnation.
Meaning the current outrage was coming from people who hadn’t seen the film and were only mad about the result.
On the other hand, people who watched the film couldn’t help but understand why the double wins happened.
In the end, once “Mueon:ga” got a proper worldwide theatrical release, it would be a controversy that naturally settled down.
In the middle of that, Han Seungwoo was smirking beside me.
“It’s a mess.”
I thought he was talking about the same thing I was looking at, but he wasn’t.
Han Seungwoo was reading Korean articles.
Articles about me staying in Cannes to attend “Cannes Lions.”
“See? I told you if we waited and released the article right when people were coming home, it would burn harder.”
Just like he said, when I wanted to tell fans in advance that I was staying in Cannes, Han Seungwoo had stopped me.
He understood I was trying to reassure them, but he said it killed the drama.
Fans’ worry would only last a moment anyway, and that worry would flip into exciting news in an instant, creating a bigger impact.
I got persuaded.
And since it was actually moving in a positive direction, I couldn’t deny it.
Noise marketing and media play—Han Seungwoo was the expert.
Ryu Sunho really lives a crazy busy lifeㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Cannes ends and it’s straight to an ad festival
While others fly home, he stays alone and aims for another award—class;;
At this rate is he becoming an honorary citizen of Cannes?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ No!!! Protect Ryu Sunho!!!
└ Don’t steal our national pride…
But is it seriously the first time an actor goes to Cannes for ad planningㅋㅋㅋㅋ Maybe it’s the first in the whole world
His stride is different, seriouslyㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“His stride isn’t different.”
Han Seungwoo muttered while looking at my feet in running shoes.
That was right.
I was out near the beach to run. With Han Seungwoo.
I’d been eating too well while staying in Cannes, so I felt like I’d put on a little weight.
I meant to run alone, but Han Seungwoo must’ve been bored—he said he’d do it too and followed.
But unlike his bold talk, Han Seungwoo’s stamina was terrible.
“Huff… huff…”
All mouth, no lungs.
“…Why do you run so well?”
“Drink less.”
He kept failing to match my pace and wheezing, so in the end he gave up running and decided to walk briskly instead.
Well, I had the trait called Runner’s High, and I’d been running consistently for a long time, so from a normal person’s perspective, keeping up would be hard.
“Damn, that guy runs well.”
Han Seungwoo, barely catching his breath and walking, pointed at someone sprinting ahead.
A man with his hood pulled up was running at a ferocious speed.
Yeah, he was fast.
But why was he sprinting like his life depended on it?
He was running like he stole something.
…Huh?
At that moment, a sharp scream rang out from behind the running man.
“Catch that bastard! Thief! My bag!”
He really did steal it.
Looking closely, there was an out-of-place handbag in the running man’s hand.
The moment I understood, my body moved first.
Tap—!
My leg muscles exploded with output, and my acceleration kicked in instantly.
The sound of slicing wind hit my ears.
Whoosh—!
The gap closed in an instant.
When my footsteps drew near, the fleeing man glanced back.
His eyes widened.
He clearly hadn’t expected to be caught that fast.
“Damn it!”
He tried to turn sharply and cut into an alley.
But it was a dead end.
Realizing there was nowhere left to run, he stopped hard and turned around.
His gaze, sucking in rough breaths, turned vicious.
“Get lost!”
He flung the handbag to the ground, then swung a heavy fist straight at me.
Whumph—
A punch with decent weight and speed.
But to my eyes, it moved slowly.
[Physical Acting: S]
After reaching S-rank, I’d developed a sense that instinctively read an opponent’s muscle movement.
The shoulder opened first. The trajectory’s too big.
Meaning I could dodge it.
Without panicking, I leaned my upper body slightly back.
The fist skimmed past my nose.
When the attack missed, the man’s center pitched forward and he staggered.
I didn’t miss the opening.
I stepped in fast, hooked his extended arm, and at the same time tripped his leg to break his balance.
A restraint technique I’d drilled repeatedly at the action school.
So the action school I kept going to for the fan meeting video shows its true value here.
“Aaagh!”
The man slammed into the ground with a scream, and I immediately twisted his arm behind his back and pinned him down.
He tried to struggle, but with his joint bent, he couldn’t apply force.
“Haah… huff… hey, are you insane?”
Han Seungwoo finally caught up, eyes wide, looking down at me.
He alternated his gaze between the pickpocket pinned to the ground and me, then let out a hollow laugh.
“…You’ve got skills. You could be an action actor.”
“Call the police instead of talking.”
But the surrounding atmosphere wasn’t normal.
People had gathered, murmuring.
Click— click—
Loud shutter sounds burst out.
Not just phones—there were even people holding large cameras.
Where did they even crawl out from.
Anyway, I stayed holding the guy down, waiting, when I saw the woman who’d been pickpocketed running over from far away, panting.
“Huff, huff… thank you so—oh?”
The woman who had been thanking me while catching her breath lifted her head.
The moment our eyes met, her eyes went round.
“Ryu…?”
After handing the pickpocket over to the police, I came out.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Ms. Sara Collins.”
The woman who recognized me.
I thought her face looked familiar, and she was the ad planner who had come to our place back when we were filming “Two Table.”
“Same here. And I didn’t think we’d meet like this. Haha.”
Sara handed me a menu.
“You saved me. I have to repay you at least this much. Eat as much as you want.”
I came out to lose weight, and now it looked like I’d be refilling calories.
If I stick to protein-heavy food, it’s fine.
After finishing my self-justification, I ordered salmon steak and a salad.
Han Seungwoo, shameless, ordered the most expensive steak and pasta.
“I watched ‘Two Table’ on OTT. When the PD asked me if it was okay to put my career on the broadcast, I thought it was weird, but once I saw everything, it was a device to make you shine.”
We talked about this and that while eating.
Sara complained like she was sulking, but she said she was happy her Korean followers had increased a lot because of it.
Then, as if something occurred to her, she said, “By the way, I heard the news. They say you wrote a whole new piece of history at Cannes?”
Word traveled fast.
Well, Sara’s husband was a famous pop-culture journalist in the U.S., so it would be stranger if she didn’t know.
“Best Actor and the Palme d’Or… that’s a truly insane result.”
“I got lucky.”
“Cannes doesn’t give awards by luck.”
She spoke firmly, looking straight into my eyes.
Her gaze was full of respect.
“But are you planning to stay in Cannes a bit longer and enjoy it? Like a vacation?”
“No. I still have a schedule.”
“Schedule? What schedule? The festival’s over.”
“I have to attend Cannes Lions.”
Sara paused, staring at me.
“Huh…? Attend what? Cannes Lions as in the Cannes Lions I know?”
There wouldn’t be another event in this town called Cannes Lions.
I nodded.
Then Sara slapped her knee like she’d figured something out.
“Ah! You’re speaking there as a guest speaker, right? Yeah, if you’re a superstar like you, that makes sense.”
It wasn’t rare for famous actors or celebrities to be invited to the Cannes ad festival as speakers.
But I shook my head.
“No. I was invited as a creator. For a submitted campaign.”
“What…?!”
Sara’s mouth fell open.
“Are you serious? What campaign?”
Her eyes sharpened like the work habit kicked in.
I briefly explained the campaign linked with “Doctor Princess.”
While she listened, Sara’s expression kept changing.
“Wait… that was your idea?!”
Sara shook her head, unable to believe it.
Then she looked at me with meaningful eyes and said, “…Then you need to come to tomorrow’s awards ceremony dressed sharply.”
Her eyes were filled with certainty.