Brad Elridge’s Cannes Diary #1

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Brad_Cannes.jpgBrad Elridge (left), founder and ECD at Soap Creative Linked By Isobar is representing Australia on the Cannes Mobile Lions jury. Elridge, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors writes exclusively for CB.

It’s 5.30pm Standard Cannes Time (SCT). I’ve just arrived back at the JW Marriot having completed my first day of judging the Mobile category. There are ten members on our jury, presided over by Andy Hood, who is the Head of Emerging Technologies at AKQA in the UK.

 

The day kicked off with a short walk in the sunshine at 8.45am between the Hotel and the Palais. We had to snake around various cordoned off areas with workers hastily erecting pop-up party marquees along the beachfront to house cabanas for the likes of Adobe, Hulu, Nokia (what year is it?) and the networks of course. Once inside the Palais, the sunshine was quickly replaced by concrete walls and a briefing from Australian National and Chairman, Terry Savage.

In the lead up to judging here on the ground, we had assessed around 1,180 pieces of work remotely. We received the good news we had whittled that down to a measly 700 or so, and today we had to get through 189 case studies each.

 

It will be the same again tomorrow, judging as individuals, with headphones on, scoring the work out of 10 to create a shortlist we can debate as a group over the weekend.

 

Today I looked at the following subcategories; Activation by location, Wearable Technology, Websites (as part of a campaign), Apps (as part of a campaign), Corporate/Commercial, In Game Marketing, Content For User Engagement, Influencer Talent and Cross Device Campaign.

 

The Content for User Engagement section was by far the biggest subcategory and took up most of the afternoon to judge. Content is a pretty broad term – and there was a broad range of entries. In fact, the entries are very broad and diverse across the board. I’d like to report on some patterns or themes but there aren’t many.

 

For some reason there were a number of social awareness campaigns about speeding. There was also a bit of a trend to use GPS to draw pictures on google maps using your location. Other than that it seems to be a bit of a mixed bag.

 

I don’t want to promise anything, but the Australian work entered looks strong amongst the competition in my opinion. But who knows how my fellow jurors might see it.

 

That’s all for me now, till next time – toodleloo.