Sometimes there is no out-of-the-box solution. Our in-house development team is there to fill in the gaps.
Sometimes there is no out-of-the-box solution. Our in-house development team is there to fill in the gaps.
Anyone who has been to Cannes Lions knows that besides the heat, one of the most annoying things is sifting through emails on a weak wifi connection to find a check-in QR code. This year, LinkedIn & BW Events were ready with a custom soltion.
Multiple registration sites are a fact of life at Cannes Lions. Brands running a full week of programming typically stand up a separate microsite, and a separate guest list, for every activation, panel, and party. For attendees, that usually means arriving with a phone full of disconnected confirmation emails and hoping they can find the right QR code before they reach the front of the line.
LinkedIn’s priority for Cannes Lions 2026 was all about optimizing the attendee journey and providing a smooth check in process. To support a full slate of programming, the team built dedicated microsites on Splash for each activation, giving them precise, curated control over who could attend each part. But it also meant that, by default, every activation would issue its own separate confirmation email, splintering the attendee experience across as many QR codes as there were events.
Rather than accept that fragmentation as the cost of doing business at Cannes, LinkedIn set out to do something different.
Working with BW Events, LinkedIn used ShowUp™ to consolidate all of their individual Splash events into a single parent event. Instead of each activation operating as its own isolated system, ShowUp™ unified the registration data behind the scenes and issued every attendee one QR code, delivered as a wallet pass digital badge, that served as a single entry point across all of their eligible sessions.
That Wallet Pass covered a full range of LinkedIn touchpoints across the festival, including:
To make adoption effortless, ShowUp™ Digital Badge distributed a custom confirmation email with an "Add to Wallet" call-to-action, so attendees could save their credential straight to their phone.
Anticipating that several attendees would still arrive without adding their Wallet Pass, BW Events added a new feature to ShowUp™ Admin that allowed the registration managers to access and issue a guest’s Wallet Pass instantly without asking them to dig through their inbox. Giving them this ability allowed for a seamless check in experience whether the guest was prepared or not.
“If we didn't have your team and this solution this year, the attendee guest journey would have been a lot clunkier. And this really was a game changer and how we were able to move things along quickly and just get everybody into our fabulous space.” - Julia Fardin, Associate Event Marketing Manager
The unified badge system supported more than 8,000 registrants, including nearly 3,000 who engaged on-site across LinkedIn's activations, all moving through the week on a single credential.
More than a logistics fix, this was a first for Cannes: LinkedIn set the bar for consolidating multiple event registrations under one brand umbrella, showing what's possible when a brand designs for the attendee's full week, not just each individual activation in isolation.
“Thank you BW Events for all your support leading up and onsite for us - your partnership helped make this year’s LinkedIn experience a success!” - Danielle Damiano Medeiros, Global Head of Tentpole Experiences, Events & Exec Engagement
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