Levi Slavin’s Cannes Diary: Day One

Levi Slavin, creative director at Colenso BBDO Auckland, is New Zealand’s representative on the Cannes Lions Promo+Activation jury. Slavin, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

‘It has to make you feel something’. That was the last on the list of judging criteria offered by Rob Schwartz before we began.

Schwartzie (as I like to call him when he’s not around) then divided us into groups to tackle the 3,000 entries in our category.

You can’t help but feel something in a place like this. It’s huge. It’s beautiful. And success or failure here means so much to so many people.

The smaller groups were then taken into different screening rooms. We sat down, got out our voting tablets, and a disinterested French woman pressed play.

This is when I felt despair. 3000 entries. All with the same structure. It was like some kind of modern torture.

THE PROBLEM: There are so many of them. 

THE SOLUTION: There didn’t seem to be one. 

THE RESULTS: A slow building headache and loss of vision in my left eye.

We did this for five hours and then took a break.

Standing in the sunshine, overlooking the Croisette, I suddenly felt incredibly fortunate. Here I was, in the south of France, watching the best work in the world.

We finished our wheels of lunch cheese and discussed the best ideas.

Back in the room the headache returned.

That night we finished judging at around 8pm and popped to the Carlton for a €400 sandwich. Sitting between oligarchs and inflatable women we were lucky enough to witness the ever humble John Mescall win about fifty D&AD pencils.

The following morning we met back at the auditorium. We sat down, got out our voting tablets, and another disinterested French woman pressed play.

The next two days of judging just got better and better. The good work seemed to come a little more frequently. The case studies seemed a little more tolerable. And the more comfortable the jurors became, the more interesting the discussions.

On the evening of day three we entered our numbers and voted on the 3,000th piece of work.

Everyone felt relief.

Except for the Parisian in our group who seemed to only ever feel furious.

Today we pick finalists. Tomorrow we judge metal.

I’m sure over the next two days I’ll experience a lot of debate, see a lot of great work, and I’ll continue to feel more and more fortunate to have taken part.