Feature: Judging and blogging in Cannes

Shelford Chandler, executive creative director for The Marketing Store, reports on June’s judging for the Cannes Lions

Cannes Lions, the place where the great and the good of the international ad world get to hang out, network and party, and maybe even get to see some work or catch a seminar. But of course it’s really about the networking and partying, and if you’re lucky enough to pick up a Lion, the celebrating.

A couple of years ago the organisers came to their senses and added ‘promo’ to the list of awards categories, and this year they kindly asked me to be a Promo jury member.

Here are some excerpts from my Cannes Judging dairy.

Tuesday June 10

Arrive at Gray D’Albion Hotel, Cannes - a tad disappointed, not quite the luxury expected, We later discover the design, direct and ad jurors are spread around The Martinez (contemporary cool) and The Carlton (very swish) - but not jealous.

Welcome dinner at The Carlton (they’re rubbing it in). Meet rest of team - they seem like an easy-going group - think I’m going to enjoy this. Get an early-ish night in prep for first day of judging. It will be my last for a week.

Thursday June 11

Start my Cannes blog - really created just for the office to prove I’m actually working and to send some insights back, if I can. It’s the second day of judging and I seem to have lost a day somewhere - it’s all a bit of a blur. We’re well looked after, but we’re on a strict schedule, shepherded from hotel to convention centre (Palais de Festival) at 8.45 am - split into groups of 6, we judge different promo categories.

Friday June 12

For the past 3 days we’ve been locked in a small dark room hidden in the depths of the Palais. It’s all very well organised and voting is strictly controlled and monitored, as each piece of work is shown we become braver as a group, discussing, challenging and often disagreeing, but we generally get to a consensus and mark each piece individually via their pda set-up.

The amount of work entered into promo this year is 40% up on last, over 1100 entries, both testament to the power of ‘Promo’ and to the diversity of work coming from agencies around the world. But it’s a bit of a catch all category, and we spend a lot of our time discussing what makes a ‘Promo’. In the end we give up trying to over define the category and mark on creativity and cut through.

Monday June 15

Last day in Cannes, the bronzes, silvers, and golds are allocated, and there’s some strong debate but final firm agreement on the Promo Grand Prix.

Having experienced the rigour and intensity of a Cannes Jury, and the outstanding quality of global entries, it’s easy to see why only the very best work gets through onto a Cannes shortlist, to say nothing of picking up an award

Take the Promo Grand Prix winner itself, the HBO “voyeur” campaign. It was clear to all on the judging panel that this campaign would probably sweep up across the other categories (and it did), and there was some debate around its entry into the promo category. Should it be a ‘Promo’ Grand Prix winner or should we give the award to something more obviously promotional? The jury were fairly evenly divided on this point, but what won through was the sheer power of the idea and the sophistication of its execution, from intriguing, involving web content to a mesmerising live experience - definitely a promo!

But it wasn’t just the big scale multi dimensional campaigns that caught our attention. We saw potential winners in more quietly spoken activities that made smart use of smaller budgets. Take the Bird Protection campaign from Japan. To create awareness amongst the younger generation Japanese of the many endangered bird species in Japan, the songs of the birds were recorded and mixed into dance tunes. They were pressed as vinyl records, packaged in retro sleeves and sold in limited numbers - equalling those of the number of birds left. Lateral thinking at it’s best and a well deserved, left field, Gold Lion.

And how about this for lateral thinking, another Gold Lion winner and an idea that captivated my jury group as soon as we saw it, for its simplicity and charm as well as its clever use of a small media budget. To promote the sales of down jackets for an outdoor clothing chain in Stockholm, an experiment was created, ‘Is it possible to hatch an egg in a down jacket?’ An account handler from the agency - ‘the hen’ - hatched the egg inside a down jacket in a temporary ‘chicken farm’ built outside one of the stores. The idea created unprecedented PR and the experiment could be followed live on the stores’ web site.

So, some extreme examples of Cannes winners, from the big budget might of HBO’s “voyeur”, to the small but beautifully formed Swedish chicken! Apparently that’s what Cannes is all about, and apart from being great ideas brilliantly executed they do have one other thing in common which as a Cannes Juror you get to notice and become an expert on, very quickly; they were all simply and powerfully communicated as awards entries. The entry forms were short and to the point, and most importantly the entry films were carefully crafted and told an arresting cliché-free story, well worth remembering.

So that’s it, after a week in the slightly surreal world of Cannes, I go back to work, just as Cannes proper starts. The delegates are arriving, the hotels, bars and restaurants are filling up, the beach parties are kicking off, the shortlisted work is displayed and the seminars begin. It’s been an enlightening experience but I’m in desperate need of some normality!

A shorter version of this article appeared in the July/August issue of Sales Promotion