Ben Welsh’s Cannes Diary: Day Six

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Ben-Welsh-Cannes-thumb-200x266-116422-thumb-200x267-116977.jpgBen Welsh, ECD at M&C Saatchi, Sydney is Australia’s representative on the Cannes Lions Outdoor jury. Welsh, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is of course reporting exclusively for CB.

It’s over. Today over 12,000 delegates will depart, leaving what? 50,000 empty bottles of rose, a few thousand of champagne and a far greater number of brain and liver cells. More importantly is what they will take with them. The successful ones will have luggage laden with Lions and no one has been more successful than McCann’s Melbourne who have, with one campaign, dominated this year at Cannes. Not just dominated, their achievement is unprecedented; Five Grand Prix and more Gold Lions than I can count. They will have a lot of excess baggage to pay.

I’ve never seen such unanimous praise for a piece of work. Every jury was immediately captivated. Dan Wieden and Lee Clow weren’t the only ones who wished they’d done it; the work is perfect. Death is one of those taboos we don’t talk about, and tragic teenage deaths that tend to happen around trains top the list. But here we are singing about it. The song is totally innocent and engaging, belying its subject matter. The performers are recognizably human, but not too human, which means we don’t mind when they are sliced in half by a train. And it works in every format.

It’s a big, original idea that exploits a social tension, integrated, engaging and crafted to perfection.

If there’s a formula for Cannes this year that seems to be it. Nearly all the winners had a social awareness, from the obvious issues in Dove and Coca Cola Small World Machines/Sharing Can, IBM outdoor where the message had a useful social purpose to smaller social comments like the Smart Car spot from Germany which merrily exploited the stupidity of having a 4WD in the city.

Sometimes there was a bit too much social awareness and not enough humour The most Ilaughed this week was at the Saatchi & Saatchi new directors showcase and while watching some of the old classics. Thank you Clems Melbourne and Carlton Draught for supplying some cheer.

Lots of the usual big brands were missing in Gold, particularly in automotive; there can’t be many years when VW doesn’t get anything in film, and there was nothing from Audi or Toyota who are usually up there. Apart from the Carlton Draught and a breakthrough Southern Comfort spot very little great alcohol work either – Guinness, Bud, Miller, were absent. Nothing from Levis or Diesel in clothing, and I’m struggling to think of any FMCG.

I spent most of my time looking at outdoor work so it has been interesting seeing some of the same work in other categories. Apart from the Grand Prix nearlyeverything in Print seemed to have been in outdoor – exactly the same pieces of work, same size, same font size, which is a bit suss. The Expedia campaign that our jury loved was ignored in print as someone had seen it before. The WWF ant protest march which won Grand Prix for good, was ignored by us because we had seen it before. Seeing how different juries behave you can feel proud of getting short listed. I was told that one of the Grand Prix winners this week was a call back – it hadn’t even made the short list, one of the jury felt it deserved to be in there and it ended up on top.

Cannes Lions has come a long way in the 60 years since it started back in Venice. Then it was solely for Cinema advertising, now it has Direct, PR, Promo, Radio, Cyber, Press, Outdoor, Media, Integrated, Titanium, Innovation and next year Healthcare is being added to the list. It’s getting bigger, but is it getting better?