How Mike Felix and Matt Swinburne went through hell – and Air France – to claim Gold at Cannes

I can’t write. I can’t even think. We’ve just finished the Young Lions print competition in Cannes representing Australia for 2011.

Matt started this adventure by relaxing on some Croatian island with the wife. I would have loved to spend the days before the competition in Croatia with Matt’s wife, but instead I decided to have a motorcycle crash, a 30-hour flight, lose my luggage and the piece of paper that said where I was staying.

It’s a tad daunting sitting in the briefing room, crammed in there with 41 teams from other countries.  The client this year was a nice chap, Ben, who talked to us about Pump Aid, an inspiring water and sanitation charity operating in Africa. The client was passionate, but the brief was a touch complicated and had Matt and I scratching our heads for much of the evening.

A planned Cannes is a good Cannes, and that is true for both the parties and the competition. We sat down and talked through a game plan: Find the right question for the brief on the first night, have a good 7 hour sleep (which not many other teams did) then 6am -11am the next day we’d concept, then go in and mock up to hand in at 8pm. Apart from a last moment revolution to our idea it all went to plan.

By the time you hand in your concept you can’t even tell whether it makes sense or not. My brain is still fried. It’s strange because you have plenty of days just like this at work but there is something about all the other teams from all the other countries that really raises the intensity.

Anyway it’s all over, you have about 49 seconds to relax before you can start stressing about getting the result the next day. You are led into a room. A large shoe-horn configuration of the desks houses the judges, all of which have recognizable and intimidating names printed on little cards in front of them. They call out the winners from bronze to gold.