Laurie Geddes’ Cannes Diary #3
Laurie Geddes, creative group head, J. Walter Thompson, Sydney is representing Australia on the Cannes Film Lions jury. Geddes, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors reports exclusively for Campaign Brief.
The Final Day
The last five days have been a blur of judging and trying to shake off the dreaded airline-induced lurgy (not helped by going daily from the scorching heat of a Mediterranean summer to the arctic chill of the judging room – it’s so notoriously cold in there, they’ve taken to providing Cannes Lions monogrammed blankets to wrap yourself in).
Our third day of judging follows a similar pattern to the first two. Split into three groups, we plough our way through the long list of entries. Finally, on the fourth day, we all come together in one room to review the preliminary shortlist. And from hereon, the process loosely resembles the seven stages of grieving.
First comes the shock. Up until this point, we have each individually seen less than half of the entries. There are entire categories we haven’t even touched and suddenly we are presented with what seems like an entirely arbitrary shortlist. Shock is quickly followed by denial and anger. Surely this isn’t the best of the work? What about X? What happened to Y? There is much muttering and shaking of heads.
Then the depression sets in. We spend two long days ranking and tweaking the shortlist, with an entirely negative focus on the bottom end of the list and what doesn’t belong there. Not a happy business. Next comes the bargaining. Everyone has the opportunity to resurrect one piece of work and argue the case for it. Almost everyone wishes they could bring back more than one, but rules are rules.
Day 6 brings acceptance. Now we’re in positive metal-awarding mode, focusing on the best of the work, and we start to feel better about the list. There is surprisingly more consensus at the top end than in the lower ranks, where there is heated debate. Unfortunately, the
reality of this process is that no one will ever be entirely satisfied. Everyone will walk away thinking about what they would have done differently, but when you are out-voted by 15 highly intelligent people, you just have to roll with it.
Day 7 is all about hope. This is the fun stuff, deciding what gets elevated. We applaud each gold as it’s awarded. It feels good to give. And by late in the evening, when it comes time to decide on the Grand Prix, we are like a well-oiled machine. We hardly need to discuss it. The vote is cast. And now it’s over to the industry to judge whether we’ve made the right decision.