Michael Knox’s Cannes Diary: Day One and Two

Michael Knox, executive creative director, Grey Melbourne is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Lions Promo & Activation jury. Knox, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

Into the swing of things now. We’re two days deep in case study bliss and what seemed like a crazy number of entries (3241, a record for Promo & Activation) is making more sense now. By the end of today all entries will have been watched, discussed and scored. We’ll have ourselves a long list. With time this will become a shortlist and then on Monday night turn into Lions. Plenty of debate before that happens, though.

The roadies on the Croisette are making good progress too. Stages and pop-ups are popping up. Convoys of very large trucks roll into town filled with rosé and formcore presentation boards. Flowers are being planted, ready to be trampled by the international lanyard army. Each day

more juries arrive and very soon the relatively quiet streets of Cannes will turn into the united colours of advertising.