Marianne Harvey’s Cannes Diary: Day Two

Marianne Harvey, CD, Clemenger BBDO Brisbane is Australia’s representative on the Radio Lions jury. Harvey, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

Inside the Jury Room

After 2 days of shortlist judging, here are my top 5 tips for giving your entry the best chance i.e. not pissing off a radio juror.

1.     For the main audio file that you enter, the jury cannot skip it, but must play it through in full for the system to record the vote. So if your audio file is, for example, a 10 minute track of sfx that is part of a bigger idea, or a 1 hour podcast, then enter a sample or select snippets, just long enough for the jury to get how it works. A supporting case study video can explain the rest, but you might want to mention that at the beginning of your audio file.

2.    For campaigns, they are judged one after the other, so any intro blurb about the ad doesn’t have to be repeated.

3.     And if you have a campaign of many executions, but listening to 7 in a row starts to make even you tire of the idea, maybe don’t enter so many. And maybe in not so many categories.

4.     If the synopsis is longer than the radio script, something is wrong. Keep it to 1 sentence. 2 tops.

5.     And my tip from yesterday (in case you missed it), put any critical info about context into the first sentence of the ‘Script in English’ section – we see that bit of entry info first. Or better yet, put it at the head of the audio file, but keep it succinct.

Outside the Jury Room

It’s eerily empty in the Palais right now. Feels like we’re in one of those deadly-outbreak-survival-of-the-human-race type movies.