Gavin McLeod’s Cannes Diary – part one and two

Gavin McLeod, creative director of Mark. Sydney is Australia’s Direct Lions juror at Cannes this year. He and other Australian and New Zealand jurors will be writing diaries for Campaign Brief over the next week….

PART TWO

Today it feels good to be an Aussie and it takes a lot for a Japie to say that.

The jury has been very impressed by the quality of Australian work and it could well be a great year for us in Direct. Having said that, the real debate starts tomorrow and I’ve had a small taste of what the outcome of 30 different opinions can be.

Funnily enough the big, and ongoing debate, today was how the voting structure allows some questionable work to sneak into the short list.

There were a number of jurors, myself included, who felt that the bottom end of the work could have done with some serious pruning. Unfortunately the process doesn’t allow for this. Never mind, as someone on the jury pointed out, everyone only remembers the really good stuff. And that front I’m pretty confident we’ll be in good shape. Let’s just hope that all the great Australian work survives the debate and goes on to clean up. 

PART ONE

It’s uncomfortable being in Cannes this year. All conversationsinevitably end up being about how tough the industry is at the moment.Personally, I’m thanking my lucky stars that I’m having them whilstsipping a icy Leffe beer at the Martinez. I get the feeling I’m not theonly juror thinking the same thing.

A week ago Michael Lynch asked all the Australian jurors to sendobservations about their experience as judges. I’m not usually one fordoing that sort of thing, mainly because I never really feel that Ihave anything meaningful to add. But after a couple of beers I’mfeeling up to the challenge. So here goes:

If you entered work into the direct category this year without carefulconsideration to whether it was direct or not, and without providingsome concrete results, you may as well have put the entry fee to gooduse and shouted the creative department some free drinks. It would havebeen money better spent as David Sable, the Direct Chair, has made itvery clear that we are here to award the best direct work. It’s hisbelief that this is the defining year for Direct Marketing and thatclients are looking for Cannes to demonstrate that we as an industryvalue work that truly delivers on ROI. As a consequence, I ‘d besurprised if t here isn’t a massive amount of debate on Saturday andSunday about exactly what constitutes direct these days. It inevitablyhappens every time I’ve judged an award show, but with over 30 jurors Ihave a feeling this time it may get heated.

Having said that, there are a couple of people on the panel who Ipersonally have a huge amount of respect for. People like AlfonsoMarian from Shackletons in Madrid and Steve Aldridge from PartnersAndrews Aldridge in London. I’d be very surprised if guys like thesewill settle for anything less than the great ideas when it gets done todeciding what work will pick up a Lion. So hopefully we’ll end up withsome work that, as David has tasked us with doing, defines the directcategory and still manages to satisfies those of us who want to getexcited about great ideas at the same time.

Finally, I’m really conscious of how upset ‘anonymous’ gets over poorgrammar in posts. My only excuse is that I’m an Art Director and Inormally get my writer to do a sanity check on anything I write. PlusI’ve had a couple of beers.