Regan Grafton’s Cannes Diary: Day One

Regan Grafton, executive creative director at DraftFCB, Auckland is New Zealand’s representative on the Cannes Lions Radio jury. Grafton, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

The day started with the Festival chairman Terry Savage giving the radio judges an overview of the judging process.  All results go live to a monitored laptop, any judges seen to be favouring a network or a countries work can be identified.

There are a few themes running through the work. Not great ones… There seems to be a huge amount of ads for mattresses, pillows and padlock companies. I also lost count of how many ads had used reworked lullabies and fart jokes.

The great thing about the radio jury room is that it’s on the Palais rooftop and has a deck. Definitely the best spot. The only bad side is the toilet lock broke and I was trapped in there. Oh well, judging on an iPad means you can work from anywhere I guess.