Natalie Knight’s Cannes Diary #1
Natalie Knight (left), creative group head, FCB, is representing New Zealand on the Cannes Outdoor Lions jury. Knight, along with most of the other NZ and Australian jurors, writes exclusively for CB.
The road to Cannes.
I don’t really know how I got here, but I know it took too long. An 11.15 hour flight to Hong Kong. Another 12.05 hours to Frankfurt. Another 1.25 hours to Nice. I ran my own airport marathon and when I wasn’t competing to get to the next terminal I was spaced out in a lounge re-caffeinating myself in the hope I wouldn’t fuck it all up and never make it. Because that would be the worst thing ever. Yep, it really is a long way to Cannes. When people say, “Wow, New Zealand? That’s so far away!” Well, they are, right.
But the truth is, those 24 hours are nothing compared to the time I’ve actually spent trying to get here. Consider the ridiculous number of desk hours clocked up. The insane amount of self doubt minutes (far more than necessary). To be honest sitting here I can’t bring myself to add up how long it really must be. Years. Far too many. It probably would have been faster if I’d just swum here with my legs tied together. And I’ve already decided I’m not waiting this long to return again. From here, all those hours of pain are totally worth it.
Judging. Day One.
I’ve never worked in a supermarket. But today I was given the biggest name badge and barcode scanner, two things that clearly told me this was Le-Grande-Supermarché-Des-Cannes. And today was stock-take day. All 15 of us, many first time Grande-Supermarché scanner operators, stood united with one mission, to scan and check the ‘Aisles of Ideas’ for as long as it takes.
I made notes on the back of my hand. 4643 Outdoor entries. 1107 Ambient. Reward work that makes you 1) Look up. 2) Give a shit. They were wise words from our President.
We had unlimited coffee and rows of chocolate croissants at our disposal. There would be no stopping us. We promised to only take a 26 minute lunch break. Before you knew it, the place was alive with a symphony of sound, our palm sized instruments making gratifying beeps for every single piece of work. It was an unexpectedly soothing melody. Our orchestra conductor nodded off to sleep in a chair at 3:59pm. We played on. My only hope is that our musical odyssey will be released maybe in some sort of world advertising anthology or at the least sampled by Sofi Tukker or A$AP Rocky before someone makes me clean up the croissant crumbs and spilt Perrier in aisle 7.
When I looked up in the bathroom mirror some hours later, I saw I had un-thoughtfully rubbed the wise words from my hand into a strange dark blue shadow across my chin. Not so wise. Will not write on hand again.