Stephen de Wolf’s LIA Diary #2: “Do we think we have one?”
Stephen de Wolf, National Chief Creative Officer, Clemenger BBDO, is representing Australia on the inaugural Sports jury at LIA in Vegas. Here, de Wolf, along with most of the other Australian and New Zealand jurors, reports exclusively for CB.
After three days in the jury room, I finally ventured beyond the hotel doors. The lights and sounds of the hotel seemed to spill outside, only turned up to a million.
The air was fresh, but somehow less euphoric than the pure oxygen we walked through to our jury room every morning. Maybe that’s why, when we sat down on day three to agree the final shortlist and metal, we realised we’d been a little too generous.
So, we recalibrated and started debating. Actually, debating is probably the wrong word. It was more a robust conversation as we reminded ourselves of the criteria we’d set on day one and reset the bar for what truly great creativity in sport should be.
There was something uniquely special about day three too. It wasn’t just the 10 judges in the room. There were around 30 of this year’s LIAisons sitting in with us. I used to wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in a jury room. These young creatives actually got that chance. What an opportunity.
Back to the judging. We landed on our shortlist, then bronzes, silvers, and golds. Then came the Grand LIA.
Unlike other shows, you don’t have to award a Grand Prix if the work wasn’t there. So, the first question we asked ourselves was, ‘Do we think we have one?’. We all agreed there was one piece worth considering. And, unanimously, we agreed it should become the inaugural Sports Grand LIA.
For us, it was a big, scalable idea. One that transcends sporting codes and shows how powerful creativity in sport can be at galvanising people and culture, while bringing joy far beyond the sport itself.
And with that, we were done.
For our final evening, the jury and LIAisons headed to drinks at the ‘Neon Graveyard’. It’s an amazing place where old Las Vegas signs were dumped and then turned into an outdoor museum.
It felt somehow fitting. These incredible old signs from another time, beautifully crafted, beautifully designed, with iconic typography just sitting there. In the background, a newer, bigger, brighter Las Vegas glowed with enormous LED signs and screens everywhere.
Amazing, yes. But somehow a little less human and a little less authentic than what we were standing amongst, talking about creativity and how we make sure great ideas and great craft survive whatever comes next.
Read Stephen’s first diary here
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