Dave King’s Cannes Diary: Final wrap
Dave King, ECD, Innocean
Worldwide sat on this year’s Direct Lions jury. With the judging over King gives his final wrap-up exclusively for Campaign Brief.
Wrap. There
were 3070 entries in Direct this year. By the time we got to Cannes
there were just over 2,000 following pre-judging. At the end we’d given
out 1 Grand Prix, 15 Gold, 25 Silver and 34 (I think ) Bronzes. Just
2.4% of the original entries got metal. And that number would have been
even lower had we not been ‘encouraged’ to bump work up. At one stage we
were told we were the toughest Direct Jury in the history of Cannes.
As always, there was great work awarded and great work that missed out. There was also poor work that was awarded. The Swedish Number won our Grand Prix and did so convincingly, the only challenge coming from Colenso’s Brewtroleum. McWhopper from Y&R New Zealand was also well-liked but fell away at the end as a number of judges weren’t convinced it wasn’t a charity job.
Sadly none of the 
Australian work really caught the panel’s attention to a huge degree. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t done or entered, it just didn’t end up in front of the full judging panel. The first three days of judging sees work evaluated by five people only. There’s just too much to get through otherwise. But based on the great pieces that were called back by judges after not making the shortlist,
great work can easily miss out
We weren’t allowed to call scam, but my radar was going off constantly. And the repugnant thing was most of the scam work was taking advantage of tragedy, following death or chaos. Like the miserable people who developed the Eye Sea app, there was a lot of dodgy work for charities. I had to call one as the case video was impeccable but so clearly didn’t happen. It was also a case of one of the judges putting it forward for another member of the panel. Sadly, that shit and block voting still happens, but you probably knew that.
Mark Tutssel our president was great. Very fair and got all involved. There were also some great jurors, passionate and fun.
So learnings. Make sure you make it clearly direct. Make sure you enter the right category. Make sure you tailor your entry to that category. Try and get your video down to 90 seconds and try and make it funny, if possible. Enter copywriting. Enter Automotive. Try and do the best work on your biggest brands, there was a real movement away from charities this year. But most importantly, try and do really simple, clean ideas that make people smile. Watch the Swedish entry and the baby stroller thing from the States and you’ll see what I mean.
Now to spend the rest of the weak learning and mangling this beautiful language. Cheers.
2 Comments
Given we all spend so much money entering these things shouldn’t we expect better than what Dave has outlined?
Scam not being called, block voting, biased judging. The panels of five people to get to a shortlist feels flawed too, let alone the cull that happens pre-Cannes.
I’ll admit, I’m bitter. My agency (from Australia) had a cracking campaign that had previously been recognized locally and internationally as a really good one, with results to match…. and it didn’t even get a shortlist.
That’s dumb. And an expensive waste of time and money for my agency.
We’ll be back next year. Of course we will. But god it would be nice to feel like Cannes wasn’t such a lottery.
“The first three days of judging sees work evaluated by five people only” WTF
London Internationals, New York Festivals, Australia’s Award plus most others every judge sees every entry… Get more judges Cannes. It’s not like you don’t have the money!