Dylan Harrison’s 2011 Cannes Diary – Day Four from the Cannes Promo and Activation jury room
Dylan Harrison, executive creative director of DDB Sydney, is representing Australia on the Promo & Activation jury. Harrison has just finished day three of judging and writes exclusively for Campaign Brief. Other Aussie and Kiwi jurors will be contributing exclusively to the CB Blog over the next 10 days, so make sure you check in daily, hourly, every minute…
Day four of the judging and the juicy part is well under way. For the past three days, we’ve rotated through smaller groups of five judges, culling the entries to arrive at a manageable body of work for us to review together. Today we voted on all of the work shortlisted, ranking it from lowest to highest.
There’s an old adage I read on a beer coaster once about how the slowest gazelle gets picked off by the predators, thereby making the group faster and stronger as a whole. While the coaster used the analogy to tenuously prove killing your slowest brain cells with beer therefore makes you smarter, the same is true for the promo and activation shortlist.
We ended the day by unceremoniously lancing the bottom ranking ideas from the body of work. The slow, the ungainly and even the curiously entertaining ideas with the gammy leg. This has produced a much more inspiring yet still comprehensive account of the best advertising promo and activation ideas in the world of the last year.
Hats off to Warren Brown in expertly sensing when to stoke the editing frenzy and when to close the books as it were, finalising the shiny list of those who made the final cut.
As we all bonded as a group, judging en masse for the first time, strangely I suspect we all know what’s coming. We had the first taste of it as we concluded for the evening.
The promo and activation jury is comprised of judges from a diverse array of backgrounds and experience. Master craftsmen from a variety of trades. Despite our mutual respect in abundance, the heat will turn up as we debate the gold, silver and bronze rankings tomorrow. Culturally, philosophically and professionally, the different ways we all approach what is ‘good work’ will create inevitable conflict.
Given the passion surfacing for such divergent styles of ideas, I think we’re all looking forward to the cut and thrust of it all. Politeness will have well and truly left the building to make way for some healthy and robust debate.
Personally, I can’t wait.