Yahoo Cannes: One Registration. One Credential. More Than 20 Experiences.

Yahoo's presence at Cannes Lions wasn't a single event. It was a collection of more than 20 experiences held across multiple venues throughout the week, ranging from individual meetings to high-demand headline events.

For attendees, however, it needed to feel like one experience.

Event Tech Stack brought the entire program together through a single registration and check-in ecosystem, allowing attendees to register once, access multiple Yahoo experiences, and use the same credential throughout the week.

The Challenge: Make a Complex Event Feel Simple

Cannes Lions presents a unique challenge for event organizers. Attendees are surrounded by competing events, brands, parties, meetings, and experiences throughout the week. Every additional registration form or check-in step creates another opportunity for someone to abandon the process.

Yahoo needed to manage registration and attendance across more than 20 individual experiences without asking guests to repeatedly register or navigate separate event systems.

The solution started well before attendees arrived in Cannes with the architecture of the event itself.

One Event, Multiple Experiences

Event Tech Stack consolidated all Yahoo experiences into a single registration journey for attendees to complete rather than creating separate registrations.

This unified approach reduced friction and made it significantly easier for attendees to discover and register for additional Yahoo experiences.

It also gave the Yahoo team one centralized view of registration activity across the entire program rather than siloed attendee lists for individual events.

Seamless Credentials Across Complex Schedules

That same connected experience continued on site, ensuring every attendee could navigate a complex, multi-venue program without friction.

To streamline movement for executives and high-touch attendees attending multiple back-to-back experiences, staff paired an NFC wristband with their record upon arrival using the Event Tech Stack Host App, a process taking only seconds. The wristband provided instant, hands-free access across participating Yahoo venues without requiring attendees to search for badges or scan QR codes at every stop.

Throughout the event, navigation remained equally simple for all attendees. Whether using a single QR code for the week or checking in via email lookup with staff, every guest experienced a unified, fast-moving check-in process tailored to their schedule.

Real-Time Access Control, Including the Week’s Headline Event

Event Tech Stack's technology also served a critical access control function during Cannes. 

At high-profile gatherings where strict capacity limits and security were paramount, preventing credential sharing was essential. Because Event Tech Stack tracked attendance at the individual-experience level, Yahoo staff could instantly see whether a credential had already been scanned for that specific event. If an NFC wristband or QR code was presented a second time, the Host App flagged it immediately, which prevented duplicate entries while keeping line movement fast and secure. 

Importantly, that same credential remained valid for every other experience on the attendee's schedule throughout the week.

Built for Real-World Event Conditions

Large-scale events rarely have perfect connectivity — particularly when hundreds or thousands of people are gathered in temporary venues.

The ETS Host App includes offline check-in capabilities so event operations don't have to stop when an internet connection becomes unavailable or unreliable.

Staff can continue checking in attendees, with check-in activity synchronized back to the platform once connectivity is restored.

That meant Yahoo’s teams could continue operating across venues without making internet availability a single point of failure.

One Week of Attendance Data, Connected Back to the CRM

The benefit wasn't limited to the attendee experience.

Throughout the week, Yahoo staff used the ETS Host App at individual experiences to capture actual attendance, going beyond basic event check-in.

Instead of ending Cannes with disconnected attendee lists from different venues and events, Yahoo had consolidated registration and check-in data across the entire program.

That attendance data was then synchronized back to Yahoo’s CRM, giving the team a more complete picture of who registered, which experiences they attended, and how they engaged throughout the week.

"For the first time ever, we were able to see all participants across all Cannes events, from delegate sessions to the cocktail hours to the main party, all in one place. The ETS platform enabled a comprehensive view with 12K participants so we could see everyone who was invited, registered, and attended. In addition to just knowing who was there, this data enables a better calculation for ROI purposes."

Barton, Director, Global Marketing Ops & Analytics

The Result: Sophisticated Technology That Felt Simple

Behind the scenes, Yahoo Cannes was an intricate operation involving 20+ experiences, multiple venues, varied access permissions, executive NFC wristbands, general attendee QR credentials, real-time capacity management, offline sync, and CRM integration.

For the attendee, it was simple:

Register once. Receive their credential. Experience Yahoo Cannes.