Ant Melder’s LIA Diary #1: Sharon Stone, Ali Wong and the battle for 10 seconds of attention

Ant Melder, Founder and Creative Partner, Cocogun, is representing Australia on the Ambient & Activation, Billboard, Poster and Print jury at LIA in Vegas. Here, Melder, along with most of the other Australian and New Zealand jurors, reports exclusively for CB.

The dry heat, bright lights, constantly flashing slot machines, background thrum of the casino, slightly unnerving friendliness of the hotel staff, and endless carpeted maze of it all. For a first-timer popping his Vegas cherry, it’s quite the experience. Just like how the first time you go to New York you feel as though the whole city’s a movie set, as I’m walking around my hotel-casino, I keep thinking I’m about to be hustled by Sharon Stone, sized up by Robert De Niro, and strong-armed out of the building by Joe Pesci.

It’s been a marathon journey to get here. But a jetlagged, brain-fogged state is actually perfect conditions for reviewing work: the brilliant, simple ideas stand out…the other stuff fades into the background. And the process is an absolute pleasure. I’m on the Ambient & Activation, Billboard, Poster and Print jury – surely the funnest one, right?! – chaired by the awesome Aaron Starkman of Rethink, and comprising a bunch of intimidatingly talented creative legends from around the world.

At the start, Aaron directs us to seek out work with scale and impact: real work that real people saw, remembered and talked about, out there in the real world. There’s plenty of it. We spend the first day sifting through a mountain of entries to curate a list of work to go forward to trophy debates.

That evening, I get a timely double reminder: of what makes Vegas so great…and what our job as creative people actually is. It comes from an unlikely source: the actor and comedian, Ali Wong. Who happens to be playing a show at the theatre inside my hotel. This makes me think – Wow, how good is Vegas?! But also, as I’m coming out of the show buzzing, I’m thinking about what true creativity and craft is. She’s had the entire theatre hanging on her every word all evening: her writing and performance is relentlessly funny, thought-provoking, and delightfully filthy. This, I think, is our competition. People have so many things to be engaged and entertained by: their friends, families, favourite bands, games, podcasts, streaming channels, and the genius of Ali Wong…so what makes our ad/idea/content worthy of even 10 seconds of their time? In a hyper-competitive attention economy, it’s on us more than ever to make our work surprising/entertaining/moving/useful enough to earn its space in people’s heads. It can’t and won’t live there rent-free.

I go into day two with this in mind and am happy to report there’s a bunch of work that fits the bill. And the rigorous, refreshingly politics-free debate around it makes the trophy-awarding session a joy. The winning work is an impressive collection, with a couple of unignorable “I wish I’d done that” ideas, and one genuinely audacious “how TF did they do that?” moment.

As we’re finishing up, one of my fellow judges tells me he’s off to play in a poker tournament. This sounds amazingly cool and, as I walk back through the casino, past the blackjack tables and groups of glammed-up, cocktail-guzzling beautiful people, for a few moments I imagine myself as a suave, martini-sipping poker master. I’m on a roll and, instead of hustling me, Sharon Stone is hanging off my every word, while glamorous strangers are thronged around the table bearing excited witness to my hot streak. “Hit me”, I say calmly to the impassive dealer, as everyone gasps at my ice cool confidence.

Then, back IRL, I remember I’m a teetotal square who’s never played a hand of poker in my life. So maybe the lights, glamour and hoo-hah are a little wasted on someone whose idea of excitement is a night in with a pot of decaf tea and a couple of chapters of Middlemarch. But still, this fascinating city in the desert that’s been machine-tooled to attract and hold people’s attention is actually the perfect place to review world-class work. Because the very best of it is clearly designed to do exactly the same thing.

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