Ant Keogh’s 2011 Cannes Diary – Day Three from the Cannes Press jury room

Ant Keogh, executive creative director of Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, is representing Australia on the Press jury. Keogh just finished day three of judging and writes exclusively for Campaign Brief. Other Aussie and Kiwi jurors will be contributing exclusively to the CB Blog over the next few days, so make sure you check in daily, hourly, every minute…

The walls of the Hotel Majestic, where I’m staying, are lined with photos of Hollywood film legends shot on the red carpet just across the road at the Palais des Festivals (see photo). They look wonderfully glamorous and successful. I guess the inference is that they all stayed at the hotel. Makes me wonder if any of them stayed in my room. For example, maybe Angelina Jolie slept in my bed. Then again I don’t think she would have slept in my shitty single bed. Maybe that dwarf inside R2-D2 would have slept in it.

Judging. We spent until 11pm getting the final short list with lots of crazy arguments. There’s an interesting thing happening now we’re getting to the pointy end. Many of those typical award-winning print ads in that award-winning visual style we’ve all seen for the last ten years are falling behind, remaining finalists or Bronze. Work you would almost consider slightly more classic is rising to the top. There are still barely any headlines. Not that classic. But it’s as if all the judges are putting out a subtle message – can you please stop doing that ad. You know, that ad.  Most of us are searching for a something else, more solid perhaps, which isn’t easy, given the work and the category. In the most part the most outrageous easy stuff is also falling away, the condom ads, Viagra ads, etc.  I can see there are definitely certain judges, including me I have to say, taking a stance.

PS: Good on you Tom, Jules, Pitty, Rohan,  and the rest of the Clems team and thanks to Will O’Rourke for their production efforts.