Schofield’s Cannes Diary – part one

Chris Schofield, creative director of DraftFCB, Auckland, is representing New Zealand on theRadio jury. He’s just finished day one of judging and writesexclusively for Campaign Brief, the only Australian trade press inCannes this year. Other Aussie and Kiwi jurors will be contributingexclusively to the CB Blog over the next 10 days, so make sure youcheck in daily, hourly, every minute… 

Like lots of foreigners here at Cannes, I too have been suffering the French over the past couple of days. Mostly thanks to that 2 nil world cup loss to Mexico the other night.

The locals, particularly the restaurant staff, have been even moreirritable, bad tempered and dismissive than ever. And the newspapershaven’t been much better. When they’re not slamming their team fordoing so badly, they’re having at crack at the opposition for beingundeserving of the win. Sounds like NZ hey. One of the headlines read’Mexico L’Imposteurs,’…. Which was the paper’s lead story. Never mindall the people drowning in the floods, our football team is facingl’elimination.

Anyway enough. The radio judging has been great so far. Paul Lavoie,the founder of Taxi Canada is presiding over the Jury, which, includinghim, has 15 people from around the world. Countries like Chile, Belgium,Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Norway, The Phillipines. And they’re allreally nice people. Just this morning Manohar Nayak from Mumbai gaveevery jury member a small stuffed Ganesh toy (pictured left). Just as a gesture. Andfunnily enough it was actually one of judge’s birthdays too. Perfect.

Overall the standard of the work has been brilliant. And I got to sayafter judging 600 or so radio ads in the last 24 hours, the best workamongst it really jumps out.  Most impressive is the new level of craftin sound, and lots of very enviable writing. Believe it or not, therewere some entry videos we watched today as well. Entry video’s forradio, what’s the world coming to.

One thing to say before I forget, and this is for my own benefit too,is remember to take advantage of the new craft categories. Especiallyin radio. There’s a best acting performance, best script writing, bestsound design and best use of radio as a medium, and there were only ahandful of entries in each. Something to remember for next year.

In case you were wondering, the issue of awarding existing campaignshas reared its ugly head.  And while we had the L&P saga back homein radio, the Real Men of Genius was a topic here for a while too.Thankfully it looks like they’ve stopped entering that work – justsettling for the squillion or so Lions they’ve picked up already. Whichis good, because one of our jury members from Chicago, David Gerbosiengineered all of that Bud Light campaign.  He reckoned 127 ads intotal. Yikes.

We’re pretty much done for the day, so while the others in Promo andCyber sweat it out in the wee hours, I’m going to sign off now and goSkype the family at home. Apparently my one year old (left) is walking now. GoPearl. Oh and before I forget, Peaches Geldof was on my flight. Jealousmuch.

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