Cannes: The Grand Prix

| | 7 Comments

Sean Boyle.jpgSean Boyle is Global Creative Planning Director on Gillette at BBDO New York, he has previously worked at JWT NY, Saatchi & Saatchi Asia and with SRVT/BAM in Sydney. Here Boyle (left) gives an account of his experiences in Cannes this year.

Why am I at Cannes?

Yet again.

A merry-go-round of excess, pretension, hair gel and fancy loafers. I tell myself it’s because this is a great place to see the best work and find out about new stuff…digital stuff! I say it’s really quite fun if you’re with the right crowd. A time to catch up with friends from around the ad world. This is all largely true…but to most of you reading, I’m just another gigantic tosser. Let’s get that out of the way up front.

Good.

Oh, and of course I’m here to win awards…I forgot that bit. A chance to gain the ultimate industry accolade: a GRAND PRIX. A thing that might just confirm I made the right choice of career all those years ago, despite the grave inner protestations to the contrary that have poked me with a stick for close to a decade now.

I’m not going to win any awards.

Do awards really matter anymore anyway?

I have won them. Here. In Cannes. Before. Golds!

When I worked in Asia, life was Scamtastic. Of course ‘scam’ is a very strong word. I merely use it to describe work that the punters, for whom it was created, never really get to see in any great numbers. And certainly not in the way they get to see the more typical rubbish we collectively churn out that tends to make their bloomin’ eyeballs bleed.

It was all ‘legal’ and ‘legit’: all the stuff appeared (tho’ maybe sometimes in a student magazine or at 4:47am during a telesales extravaganza for combat boots); it was all paid for by clients…paying clients…real ones…(usually).  From Bangkok came double-page-spreads for shoe polish…(when was the last time you even remember seeing a shoe-polish advertise in a way that wasn’t an eight-inch-double, linotype, daguerreotype on page 3 of the Rockhampton News?)…from Singapore, ads for glue; Vietnamese bicycle locks and Malaysian fitness centers: “Fat and Ugly?  Wanna be just Ugly?”

And still the award shows trundled on…huge money making machines.  Cannes itself was sold several years ago for something like e60m – not a bad chunk of change, considering what you are actually buying.

Anyway, here’s what it’s like.

For a start, it’s always sunny.

It’s a long promenade…like the Cairns Esplanade, but better…this is the South of France, where you half-expect Carey Grant to go bombin’ by on a baby-blue moped at any moment. There’s a huge exhibition hall on the beach – The Palais des Festivals – where all the awards are given out.   Each evening there’s a two hour show: the first night is DM; the second Print: the third Digital & Outdoor; the last night is Film.  Of course, I’ve got these all wrong, but you get the idea.

There are lots of people noodling around wearing schpants (half pants/half shorts), beige deck-shoey espadrilles, blue and white striped shirts and de rigueur tortoise-shell sunglasses.  Everyone has the sick-proof-vinyl-ed Cannes Delegate badge a-dangling. 

They come from all over the world. The Brazilians are the Rock Gods of Advertising. A posse of photographers crowd the foot of the stage to snap the latest Art Directing Romario to emerge from the creative slums of Rio. When Clive, the rotund, bearded, old-dog-for-the-hard-road, Copy Chief of Universal McCann Erickson Worldgroup WorldWide London tootles up after him for the next prize, there’s scarcely a flashbulb.

Lunch is under flamboyant yellow and white umbrellas on the wedding-cake-like Carlton’s private bit o’ strand.  Dover Sole Meunière at sixty snots a pop, if you don’t mind.

And Rosé. Everyone is hammering the fuck into the Rosé!  I never drink it at any other time of the year, and here I am necking the stuff like it’s bloody Ribena.

One’s repast complete, and perhaps driven by guilt at the four grand delegate ticket, it’s time to go and tour the work:  all the print and outdoor and digital and, well, everything that’s not on film, is on display downstairs in the Palais. There are well-intentioned and informative speakers on the main stages.  It’s cool and dark in here. You usually learn something.

There is a very inspiring part to this whole affair if you still really care about bringing your profession to a better place.

And then, the award shows each night…major winners displayed on giant plasmatrons inside the main auditorium.  Brazilians (at least I think it’s the Brazilians) whistle loudly and catcall if they disapprove of a winner.  It’s funny, just so long as you’re not on the receiving end.

After the prize-giving, there’s usually a big-agency sponsored ‘Do’ somewhere: The DDB Bill Bernbach Bonanza; The Leo Burnett Are On Fire Conflagration; The JWT silent disco in the library or the Y&R Just Cos We Never Win Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Know How To PAAArTTTAAAY! Party!!!…and then, it’s back to one of three hotels for more bottles of twenty-euro Heineken.

The evening is night-capped-down by a trip to the Gutter Bar.  Not actually called that…it’s the nickname for a crappy little cafe by day that stays open ’til dawn with advertising folk caning it outside on the footpath, road and gutter.  At 5:30am, burly, Day-Glo-vest-wearing, municipale street cleaners come and power-hose the detritus (including the odd fallen copywriter, his drool-covered bronze Lion still clutched to his chest in a dead-man’s grip).

That’s it.

Every day for a week.

If you’re normal, you end up with the DTs, an extra 7lbs and a touch of sunstroke.

Do awards really matter anymore?

I remember being told once that Saatchi & Saatchi did a serious study in the matter. They tracked share price against agency performance in Cannes.  Apparently, when the agency didn’t do so well awards-wise, their share price fell.  When it did, all was well with The Brothers’ standing in the corporate investment community.

Nevertheless, I dunno, there are so many shows these days…all saying the same thing really. A certain growing irrelevance is palpable.

Surely it would be better if the collective idea-power of our industry spent its playtime tending to more serious world issues?  100 ideas that cost less than a dollar to produce but will make a real difference to quality of life in 15 different African countries? The successful agency gets a new account from Unilever and a Titanium Hippo or something.

The winners are also becoming increasingly hard to describe.

Time was when you could return from any show and answer the question “What won?” with a simple, easily understood refrain: “Guinness, Evolution” or “Gorilla” or “Think Different”. Your peers would instantly get the shorthand and a bout of vigorous verbal jousting could ensue.  Today, the answer to the question is usually something like, “well, you have this box of cigarettes, right? and when you open it, a Bluetooth device in your wallet recognizes that the pack has been opened and a chip inside the cigarette sends a message to all your Facebook friends that you’re about to have a smoke and when you light up, yeah?…all the TV sets and iPads within 100meteres of you, start rolling their eyes and going “tsk! tsk! tsk!” and the people near you start shaking their heads and tweeting that you’re a twat and…well, ‘seems it cut smoking by seven percent in Uganda…and, and…ummm…I think it was for Panasonic”.

The sheer weaponry and opportunity (much of it still largely unused in most major campaigns) at the disposal of today’s brand owners gets more and more staggering every year.  Our industry is finding it very difficult to keep with the program so to speak.

Yet for all my blurted flatulence in this article…I truly believe there is a point to awards.  A point to Cannes.  To Lions.

The purist…the person who really knows, that despite what a group of pre-testing, lobotomized, postmen from Parramatta or Millward Brown say, advertising that grabs people by the goolies and makes them cry or laugh or drop their jaws in
wonderment is the stuff that moves the most hearts and wallets.

The purist who likely got into this game for that very reason and still cares and believes.

The purist who waits…like the Guinness Surfer…for a coming renaissance…a time when punters take over (really, take over) and start demanding stuff that entertains them and doesn’t ram cack down their throats 24/7.

The purist who knows that then we’ll see a genuine change.

Agencies fired cos their work wasn’t ‘creative’ enough.

Marketers on the scrap-heap because there was simply too much safety and risk aversion and mediocrity at the heart of how they drove their brands.

At this time, the Grands Prix will likely be seen as rather quaint, ahead-of-their time, distant reminders of so much lost opportunity.

We gotta keep dreaming…

…that’s why award shows still really matter.

POST SCRIPT: I won’t go into all the winners this year…you can find them all elsewhere on the web.

Save to say, the Film Grand Prix was Nike’s big, World Cup extravaganza that featured not only all of their famous footballers, but also Federer, Homer Simpson and a few other pricey cameos for good measure.  Although undeniably magnificent and probably deserving of the award…I personally would have given the gong to the charming little Gold-winning Darth Vader spot for VW.  I feel people will still speak and write fondly of this one in twenty years time…long after Write The Future has slipped from memory.