Tony Clewett’s Cannes Diary: Day 1
Tony Clewett, creative director at DraftFCB, Auckland is representing New Zealand on the Cannes Lions Radio jury. Clewett, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is of course reporting exclusively for CB. Ouch! It’s 5.30am and my head hurts. Not sure if that’s from spending eight hours solid yesterday listening to radio ads, or having to down tequila’s at the bar last night? Probably a bit of both. Yeah right.
But it was a great first day. I’ve got an awesome bunch of jury members from around the world. A great Jury President in Rob McLennan from South Africa. And a great view from our fifth floor judging balcony looking over the waterfront (we’re the only Jury who can actually see the daylight).
We were split into three groups to help make our way through the 1784 entries (the most ever in this category at Cannes – Radio is certainly not dead). My group had about 350 ads to listen to on day one. And cleverly, you have to listen to each one in it’s entirety before you can vote on it and move on. Which is great for the entrant (getting their 300 Euros worth). But not so good for the judge if you dislike the first one in a campaign, and you’ve got five more in the series to get through. No skip/fast-forward/were-they-joking button.
But I did hear some stuff I really liked. There was a rather thought provoking campaign from Playboy Magazine in Mexico, taking a swipe at third-world clothing sweatshops, baby seals being slaughtered for their fur, and the fashion industry’s use of wafer-skinny young models. Apparently clothes can be more obscene then nudity. Huh.
I also heard a radio spot for an outdoor adventure magazine that repels mossies. 15khz does it. Crikey, who would have thought? Could be one to watch, that one.
And a charming campaign for Vodafone in Ireland were they used real user-generated content. Nice to see some emotion – doesn’t always have to be a gag in radio.
Oh well, enough from me. I’ve now got the excitement of putting on some fresh clothes as my luggage finally arrived a day and a half late. Think my fellow jury members will like that. And my head’s feeling a bit better too. It’s going to be a great second day…