Dave King’s Cannes Diary: Day One + Two

Dave King, ECD, Innocean Worldwide in Australia is sitting on the Direct Lions jury. King, along with many other jurors, is reporting exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Day 0. As a Kiwi representing Australia in Direct, I’m interested in the fortunes of both countries. So here’s what I’ve seen from NZ and Australia so far.

None of the Australasian judges got too silly at the welcome drinks last night. One started using the word ‘moist’ a lot as the night wore on. She’s promised ‘this will be the theme of her blog on CB this week. We’ll see.

Day 1. We pre-judged before Cannes and cut the work down from 3070 pieces to around 2,000 to be judged this week. Some pieces I thought weren’t too good still made it through to judging today. Others looked as impressive as I remembered.

This morning the work was really good, with a few pieces from Australasia standing up very well. This afternoon was a totally different story. This category wasn’t pre-judged and it showed. Some work and some case videos were really poor. For a while we were wondering whether anything would make it to even shortlist, but a couple of pieces finally stuck their hands up. Including, I think, some stuff from our region.

It’s way too early to tell what will be shortlisted, but my impression is that the Australian and New Zealand work is generally in the top tier of work we’ve seen so far. Today was a lot of fun. Here’s hoping for the same tmrw.

(Picture 1: King and his old M&C Saatchi buddy Olivier Girard on the direct panel; Picture 2: Team snap)

Day 2. It’s wet and cold. Not Invercargill cold but definitely cold for Cannes. And it’s raining, something most judges hadn’t seen here before. So it should have made it a perfect day for judging. Sadly, it didn’t. The sub jury I was part of today, while still made up of lovely people, didn’t have the same spark as yesterday’s group. So things were a tad staid. And the work wasn’t as good.

Only a few things from Australasia were in front of us today, with one in particular getting a lot of positive comments. That doesn’t mean the others weren’t liked. Just not mentioned in the team’s wrap of their two or three highlights.

Each sub jury has seen just shy of 350 entries over the past two days, so apparently tomorrow will be a bit shorter. Which should mean we’re done in time to support our jury president and cheer on Wales against England in the football. But even if Wales do win, we can’t celebrate too hard because Friday is when we come together as a panel to see the shortlist. That promises to be a fun but long day. Not something to be undertaken feeling too dusty.

(Pictured: The moment the direct jury sees the room the print jury are judging in. Envy.)