An indoor peek at Outdoor judging (Day 1)

Victor Ng did such a great job with his daily reports from the Clio Awards judging this year that we cheekily couldn’t resist asking him again in Cannes. Ng, Euro RSCG’s Executive Creative Director is sitting on the Outdoor Lions jury and this is his DAY ONE report.

 This one’s ready to be a sequel to the classic movie “12 Angry Men”.

Think jury duty in a small room where a majority — if not unanimous — decision must be made on the fate of “The Ad”. The jurors, plucked from diverse backgrounds, are brimming with starkly different personalities and styles. Would “The Ad” be sentenced to the advertising equivalent of the electric chair? Or be acquitted of the crime of mediocrity and make headlines in the advertising world?

Welcome to a behind-closed-doors peek of Cannes Judging 2009, Outdoor category, aka “12 Angry Men and a Woman”….

Anne De Manpeou is one of the heavy hitters who make up the cast,together with Jury President Akira Kagami, Graham Fink, Jose Molla,Alexandre Peralta, Christian Mommertz, Gonzalo Venico, Rob Belgiovane,Andrew Whitehouse, Jurgen Krieger, K S Chax, James Dennis Makanas andsome guy from Singapore.

Akira made his opening address and stressed on three things: Jealousy,Courage and Hope. Does the ad make me wish I did it? Did it requirecourage to challenge conventions? Does it inspire the next generationof creatives?

Splitting into two groups, we flipped through entries housed in huge A2sized folders, and scored the ads on a scale of 1 to 9.Supermarket-style scanner in hand, I took on the first ad. Beep. There,just 4,499 more Outdoor entries to go for us (and that’s already 20%less than the year before!)

Outdoor is a unique medium that is best handled with great creativity– it’s bigger than a newspaper ad, and works faster than a 60 secondcommercial. As expected there were lots of posters, but I haven’t seena Vertical Football or HBO Voyeur orhey-guys-look-at-this-one-I-think-the-competition’s-over-we-can-all-hit-the-Gutter-Bar-nowtype of ad. Yet.

Grab some popcorn will ya?