Iggy Rodriguez: Year of the dog?
Iggy Rodriguez (near left), creative group head, Leo Burnett Sydney is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Promo & Activation Lions jury. Rodriguez, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.
Having spent the first three days in small groups of ‘mini-juries’ there’s been some amazing work already. Today the whole promo jury comes together to review the shortlist, which I’m sure will bring some more brilliance and it will also be my first chance to see the entire spread of work from all around the world. Sounds like we’re in for a really, really long day.
Australia is being represented well so far. It’s great to see our country producing so many world-class ideas and for me being the only Aussie in here it’s also comforting hearing the familiar sounds of home. By this I mean the classic “down under” voiceovers on our case videos that immediately get all the other jurors looking over to me and asking why we all speak in this funny way.
Okay, so there’s been a few themes coming out:
‘Social experiments with real people that become online videos’. Don’t get me wrong this is a perfectly valid way of brands doing cause driven marketing, I’m just noticing that it’s become the new ‘it’ formula for advertising.
Loads of pro-bono work.
Especially for the Blind and deaf. There’s been lots of very inventive and also very out there ways to trying to help them this year. Of course it’s great to be helping charities and it’s evident the advertising world certainly is doing it’s bit to give back.
Data visualisation.
We’ve seen a bunch of ideas that bring to life some kind of brain waves, inner feelings, senses and eyeball information into art, sculptures and live displays. Some better than others but some use it in place of an actual idea.
Dogs.
Hungry dogs, homeless dogs, lonely dogs, dog emotions, it could very well be year of the dog over here.
Airborne cameras.
Forget drones, they’re old news. This year it’s been all about putting cameras on pigeons and falcons.
And lastly and I’ve also noticed people setting up problems that are overly forced and clearly made up to retrofit ideas. After watching tonnes of case studies it becomes very obvious when an insight just isn’t true or doesn’t feel natural to life. I think it’s important to keep a realistic lens over some of these ‘genius’ solutions.
Okay that’s it from me.
I’ll report back later once we’ve been through the next few days of metal conversations.