Nigel Dawson’s Cannes Diary: Day Two

Nigel Dawson, ECD at Grey Melbourne is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Lions Press jury. Dawson, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is of course reporting exclusively for CB.

Have you ever been in a forest full of Bell Birds?

I have for the past two days. Press judging takes place using supermarket scanners and each scan sings like a Bell Bird. 18 people doing that every second or two sounds like the Dandenongs in mid-summer.

The silent preliminary stage is now over; each group of six has judged over 2000 pieces. So none of us has seen more than one third of all the entries. Whether or not six people is enough to give a fair judgement, considering the linguistic and cultural diversity, was the source of much debate during the lunch break. But for everybody to see all the work we’d have had to start judging a week ago (during the Porn Film Festival, I kid you not, which could have been mildly distracting).

I sense that’s we’ve become increasingly brutal as the hours have passed. The bar has inexorably moved higher as what seemed fresh yesterday morning becomes stale in the company of similar creative devices and executions. Simplicity and clarity stand out like the beacons that guide the yachts into Cannes harbour.

If there’s a word of advice for any would-be entrants next year, it’s to avoid any cartoon or 3D characters, especially if there’s food involved.

So everybody is looking forward to being given their tongues back tomorrow morning as we start discussing and dissecting the short list. And it’ll be interesting to see what it contains. Since France,  England and Spain all won in the soccer there’s unlikely to be too much festering animosity.

Two highlights of the day: the first was having breakfast next to Pierce Brosnan; and the second was seeing an ad from a department store called Arcelik.