Jason Williams: What’s the true value of a Lion?
Jason Williams, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett Australia is representing Australia on the Cannes Direct Lions jury. Williams, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors, reports exclusively for CB.
What’s the true value of a Lion?
I’m no accountant and numbers are certainly not my strength. But, here goes…
The percentages
It all begins months in advance, your direct entry is one of 2688 submitted from 76 countries (41,000 total show). That entry needs to survive 40 of the industry’s best online judges and if it’s good enough, it will become one of 346! That’s 12% of all entries. Then, ten lucky ‘awarding jurors’ spend four days reducing the shortlist even further, to just 214 entries or 8%. Long days of debate and deliberation determine the most valued ideas. Incredibly only 2.5% will win gold, silver or bronze and you have a .2% of winning a Grand Prix!
Data adds value
The Cannes scoring system and monitoring algorithm assists juries in making smarter decisions. Each submission is assessed by four criteria; idea, strategy, execution, results, each scored individually on a 1-10 scale (photograph scoring/pad). This methodology ensures your creative idea is accurately measured. A unique system empowering every jury member to be more precise as the data adds or decreases the value of your entry. If you’re lucky enough to win a lion, you know it’s been through a rigorous process and has now just become more valuable.
The value to culture
Awards are important. They fuel creative confidence, attract the best talent, strengthen client partnerships, encourage bravery, vindicate effort and energy, inspire future lion winners, fosters entrepreneurial thinking and business changing ideas.
Personal value
As a judge, it’s like joining a supercharged boot camp in analysing ideas. After judging many different shows, I actually love the case study slog. Watching hundreds of polished and compelling two minute films can be tough and confusing, but it teaches you how to decode good from bad, polished from potent. The more you watch, the better your judgement becomes and the more value you add to the show by discovering the nuggets within.
Frustration is valuable
If we go home empty handed, the frustration of seeing greatness drives our hunger. It fuels our determination, we take back our learnings to begin experimenting again. It ignites our entrepreneurial spirit and reminds us to take risks. We might leave frustrated, but I bet you’re more determined than ever to do it all again. Cannes 2018 starts on the 25 June 2017.
And if you’re fortunate to have won a lion or lions you understand the personal and professional value. If you’re lucky enough to win one in 2017 you know it’s worth its weight in bronze, silver or gold.
3 Comments
I beg to differ.
The cost of a Lion is $36 million dollars worldwide just for entry fees, although you could probably triple that by adding the cost of those case studies.
Let’s round it up to $50 million including delegate fees.
That’s $50 million that could have been spent on social causes rather than doing ads pretending they have.
Or 666 midweight creative people who could have been hired.
There is, or used to be, some value to agency corporate overlords. But not so much now that everyone wins.
A Lion doesn’t make the work any better. Any more effective. Any more valuable to your clients.
Good work is recognised without a Lion, as we see in Lynchy’s various free lists.
You no longer need the imprimatur of a Lion to decide if something is good.
Beg to differ all you like but award shows are a business. Cannes is owned by company. Just like any other business/company they have overheads. The judge writing this piece has his travel costs, accomodation food and entertainment taken care of. And yes profit is made. And yes they have shareholders to answer to.
There are loads more categories at Cannes now. Not everyone wins. If you want to be critical you would say that fewer things win more shiny things.
This is work. This is what people do for a living. It employs hundreds of thousands if not millions of people globally. It’s what keeps all the people that work in media employed. No ads, no shows, no stations. It influences the purchasing behaviours of most people on the planet. If you took one dollar from every media booking on the planet you would have 100 times the piddly amount you’re talking about. And that’s probably only in a week.
And if you haven’t noticed, this industry has commoditised its workforce. Creatives get paid less than what they used to. Like every industry, wages have stagnated. Freelancers were getting paid more a decade ago. Even though now they have 10 years more experience. WTF? And nobody gets bonuses anymore. If you need an award to put a roof over your head then nobody cares what you think. Nobody does this shit for free, Creative Accountant. Awards serve their purpose.
I thought the value of awards was if you make creatives believe they’re important, you can pay them a lot less…