Jimmy Lam’s Cannes Diary: Day Two

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Jimmy Lam.jpgJimmy Lam, Vice Chairman & Chief Creative Officer at DDB Group China, is sitting on the Direct Lions jury. Lam, along with many other  jurors from the Asia Pacific region, is reporting from the jury room exclusively for Campaign Brief.

25 jurors are once again assembled in to groups of five, but with different members to yesterday, so we can get to know more of the other jurors, though there is yet any need for discussion in voting as we are shortlisting another two categories.

Choices of main dish for lunch is limited (two), though different from yesterday. Being a food lover, I cannot imagine having this for another four more days.   

Once again, there is not many entries that sticking in my mind. The theme of the day, as many of us jurors reckoned, was domestic violence.  It may be a common problem but when you see agencies from almost every country submitting PSA entries to stop domestic violence, convincing men not beating the life out of their wives, or wives not hesitating to report their fist trigger easy hubbies to the police, all other social issues seem not critical any more.  

There were also a few entries that fellow jurors and I, after seeing the video presentation, couldn’t help utter “Really?”

JimmyLam_Cannes2_1.jpgJimmyLam_Cannes2_2.jpgEither the the consumer insight was something we as human beings never realised, or the ‘invention’ is too good to be real. It’s sad, to see many entries of desperation.

Back to video presentations, and words of wisdom from silver haired Lam are:

1) Be candid and straight to the point. If you don’t need two minutes to deliver the story, please don’t drag on.

2) The more you try to impress the juries, the more ‘moaning’ you will get from the juries.    Sitting in a freezer and going through endless numbers of video presentations that preach or beat around the bush is no laughing matter.

3) a piece of nice music alone won’t move the jury.

4) if you are using super titles or text, make it BIG because at least half of the juries wear reading glasses. Anyway, you are not going to win best use of typography with a video presentation.

5) Mention what your product or client is with clarity. The jurors always want to know.

My group finished at 4pm yesterday.  Let’s see what time it will finished today, the third day of shortlisting.

Photo captions:

1) Wish I was out there. I only can watch from a distance while defrosting over breaks.

2) Dear agency entrant, we regret to inform you that your entry is no match to the beautiful scenery outside in Cannes.