Luke Chess’ Cannes Diary: Day Six
Luke Chess, creative director at Clemenger BBDO Sydney is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Lions Outdoor jury. Chess, along with most of the Australian jurors, is of course reporting exclusively for CB.
I Should Get Outdoors More.
It’s over. For the last four days we’ve had ads offered to us like an AK47 offers bullets. And now suddenly … nothing.
It feels weird actually. Like I can go back to using only 10% of my brain. I’ve been wandering around the Palais trying to look at the Direct and Press entries, but without a barcode scanner in one hand or a judge’s smart tablet in the other it’s just not the same.
I can see from the haunted looks in the other jurors’ eyes – who I bump into quite regularly as they too try to come down off their advertising benders – that we’re all equally unsettled.
The folks back at the agency better look out too. If I can get through 1600 entries in two days, imagine how quick creative reviews will be from now on.
But, oh yes, the work. Unbelievable.
I wasn’t game to write it at the time, but the overwhelming impression on Day One was “dear me, this is not going to be a good year.”
Turns out that this is a common experience, and nothing to worry about. The task on Days One and Two is to find wheat and discard chaff. And 90% of the entries are chaff.
Day Three was when we came together to discuss the shortlist. And suddenly Cannes was a brighter and more fascinating place. Get on line and check out the work. It’s mind-boggling that such an amount of brilliance can be generated in the world in just one year.
Then Day Four was about metal.
You will have heard rumours about how work gets up at Cannes. Block voting, deals, bribes, vendettas. None of this is true.
The way work gets up at Cannes is that 17 of the top practitioners on the planet, plus me, sit and have considered but passionate discussions about what makes great advertising today.
As those discussions unfold, the examples par excellence also unfold in front of you.
And though some work needs a bit of explanation to get there (“Guys, imagine these AFL players are Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi” “¡Ya veo, señor! Sí, Messi, el futbolista perfecto y salvador de la humanidad …”) the cream inexorably rises to the top.
Until there were two.
Happily, Outdoor is one of the three Cannes Juries empowered to award two Grands Prix–one for traditional billboards or posters and one for that funky, stunty, digital-y, techy stuff.
So we did.
While my official work here is done, I’ll pop back tomorrow and chat about the results as well as the rest of this ville folle.
Till then, I’m off to get properly drunk at last, at the opening party. Au revoire.