Phoenix Santamaria and Rory Moore’s Creative LIAisons Diary #2: The Grand Prix Benchmark & Six Jury Room Insights
DDB Melbourne creative team Phoenix Santamaria (above) and Rory Moore is representing Australia at the 2025 Creative LIAisons program in Las Vegas, featuring some of the world’s most respected creative directors as speakers. Here, Santamaria and Moore report exclusively for Campaign Brief.
It’s 11:56pm. The man on the other side of the table with a silver name tag pinned to his suit flips over his final card to reveal a five of hearts.
“Twenty-one” he says, as he deftly scoops up all the chips on the table to a chorus of groans from our weary crew of fellow LIAisons. At this point, all you can do is laugh.
We’ve seen many different luck-channeling tactics from our posse this evening (to varying degrees of success). Choosing numbers based on birthdays or anniversaries. Bans on counting your chips at the table. A flat out refusal to say a certain evil number (hint: it rhymes with ‘heaven’). Our new friend Jackson even received a lucky set of numbers from a talking Elvis fortune telling machine from the strip. It proved to not be all that lucky. And hell, if the King of Rock and Roll himself can’t get it done on his home patch – what chance do us mere mortals have?
Las Vegas is truly a place unlike anywhere on planet earth. There’s a baseline level of insanity, over stimulation and utter chaos built into every inch of this city that means your head is on a swivel like you’re watching prime Nadal vs Federer on grass. We came to the conclusion that it’s what happens when the goal of every single thing here is to outdo the thing next to it. Oh, you built a treasure themed hotel with a built in pirate ship? Cool, I’m going to build one that’s a replica of the city of Venice that has a network of canals (and gondolas) running through it. Ha. Nice try, I’m building a literal pyramid that’s guarded by a sphinx with elevators that travel at a 45-degree angle. And oh, how does a 150-meter high sphere made entirely from LEDs sound?
But amid the backdrop of the Vegas insanity, today we had the privilege of surrounding ourselves in the incredibly measured sane-ness of the LIA jury rooms as they discussed, debated and ultimately awarded some of the best work from around the world. We divided and conquered across two rooms that featured heavy hitting CCOs, CEOs, Founders, ECDs, Creative Leads, led by jury presidents Chaka Sobhani and Gabriel Schmitt in ‘Ambient & Activation | Billboard | Poster | Print’, and ‘Evolution and Creative Use of Data’.
It was captivating stuff. Here’s some of our takeaways:
1. The case study is SO important. It sounds obvious, but it’s so easy for the work to get washed away in the sea of other films over the course of the day. Case study fatigue is real.
2. As the work was debated, it became very clear that the combination of simplicity and craft was the difference maker between ideas winning silver over bronze, or gold over silver.
3. The speed and clarity in which the jurors could digest and deconstruct world-class work was so impressive. It was a great lesson in being decisive and articulate with your thoughts as they made their pitch to sway other jurors who thought differently about a piece of work. On more than one occasion, work significantly rose or fell from its initial vote based on the discussion in the room.
4. The rigour and depth of discussion about the work makes you realise what an achievement it is to be awarded at any level.
5. This was particularly apparent when it came time to award ‘The Grand LIA’, which was keyed with the phrase that it has to be ‘bigger than really great work’ – setting the bar appropriately high for the most acclaimed award across the show.
6. We both basically spent the whole time with one phrase repeating through our heads – ‘I wish I did that’.
Having the opportunity to immerse ourselves inside a jury room as it all went down was an experience not to be taken for granted, and it was definitely our favourite day of the program so far. Next up is some drinks with all the LIA jurors and mentees at the Encore Beach Club (Vegas of course being famous for its beaches), before another day of amazing panelists from around the world.
See you on the other side.
