Denis Mamo’s Cannes Diary: Day Two

Denis Mamo, executive creative director, UrsaClemenger is Australia’s representative on the Health & Wellness Lions jury. Mamo, along with most of the Australian and NZ jurors, is reporting exclusively for CB.

Exhausted, overwhelmed, inspired. Day 2 of judging the inaugural Lions Health and our Health and Wellness jury has arrived at a preliminary short list.

A few things have become apparent. The quality of case studies seemed to have ramped up significantly with no holding back on big productions created specifically for the entries. They don’t make up for a crap idea but can certainly cement the quality of a good one.

There’s also a refreshing presence of humour in the work but not as much raw emotion as you might expect. Most enlightening though, is that we’ve judged 2 days of good news. Lives being saved, entire communities looking after their health and people being influenced to change their behaviour for their own good. It’s humbling to think that so much good is being achieved with the help of many agencies from around the world.

Having said that, one of the challenges of judging Health and Wellness is that much of the work is for companies and organisations, including NGO’s, that at their core are set up to change peoples lives. So while the best ideas are creatively outstanding, many pieces of work still have incredible virtue.

And this makes the culling of weaker ideas even more significant. Like the jury room, there’s no escaping the fact that our task is to set the creative bar for the future of Lions Health.  The next couple of days will be fascinating.