Claire Salvetti’s Cannes Diary: Day 1 – 3

Claire Salvetti, managing director, Mango Sydney is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Lions PR jury. Salvetti, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

Whilst the world has reached fever pitch for the Soccer World Cup in Brazil, the PR jurors have completed Day Three of judging at the World Cup of award festivals, the Cannes Lions.

Still assessing the long list, each juror now has 360 entries out of 1417 under their belts. Standards are high and the experience is humbling. The 20 other jurors are seriously talented and super nice and this year’s PR entries have truly defied the expression ‘there’s no such thing as a new idea’.

It’s abundantly clear that countless hours and fistfuls of dollars have been invested  into the entries. From dramatic voiceovers and story arcs of the reels to the painstaking insertion of the supporting print material into clear plastic envelopes, love and sweat radiates out of each case study.

It is therefore pretty inexcusable that there are three simple things killing the likelihood of many making the shortlist. Worse still, I am sure that the first two of the below mentioned are serial offenders over many previous years:

1. Lack of context

Many of the entries are unique to specific cultures and therefore explaining these nuances no matter how obvious is très important. Who knew, for example, that the French are so tickled by Mr Bean style humour? Actually, thanks to a teenage school exchange, I did know that he went down rather well with our red, white and blue friends but it is always good to be reminded when you’re judging an idea based on that information.

Also, most entries spruik ‘millions and billions’ of various measurements in the results section, yet a reach of say one million is going to be much more impressive in New Zealand than China. What would be better is numbers in percentages – 1 in 4 people in NZ for example.

2. Lack of results

You know you’re onto a potential metal winner when you’re inspired by the insight, seduced by the idea and thrilled by the execution. All it needs to get this entry through to the next stage of judging is be delighted by a breakdown of the results that shows just how effective this campaign was.

It is therefore disappointing that often what follows are a couple of abstract numbers around impressions or worse still an advertising equivalent. Merde. I know the numbers are available, any client worth their salt would expect them at the end of the campaign, so why are they left off the award entry? We need all the gory details to make an informed decision.

And finally (and the most important one, in my opinion)..

3. Lack of transparency about earned and paid media

In over 200 entries, only a handful have included details about the paid support during the campaign and yet I am sure that we have been judging entries that involved paid media, in particular as part of the social strategy.

I couldn’t identify for most entries whether something achieves viral success because influencers cared enough about the content, that they shared it, or a seeding company was engaged to drive views. Especially because many entries claim that the idea ‘went viral’ within 24 hours and this is nothing short of astonishing if achieved organically.

Even worse.. Have the case studies been written by people who intentionally leave the paid media information out to make the entry sound better? Or do they genuinely think this detail isn’t critical when entering an award that specifically rewards earned (and not owned) media? Zut alors!

Intentional or ignorant, either way, both show the challenges we face when our industry is evolving at a rate so fast that we can’t foresee that this might create a flaw in the judging process of these awards.

The reality is that any decent case study will be a perfectly choreographed campaign leveraging owned, earned and paid media. The important thing is to show how, when and why each channel is deployed.

What that inevitably means will be the implementation of a more rigorous entry criteria, which will have the world collectively groaning. The reality however, is that careers and brands are fought and won or lost on the battle field of awards and to give them any real meaning, we must do the due diligence on the detail.