Anthony Svirskis’ Cannes Diary #2

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Screen Shot 2018-06-19 at 8.28.52 am.jpgAnthony Svirskis (left), chief executive officer at Tribe is representing Australia on the Cannes Social & Influencer Lions jury. Svirskis, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors writes for CB.

What a difference a day makes. It’s Monday afternoon and I emerge from my latest day’s judging to find every part of the town’s beaches loaded with tents and marquees, every person you see is wearing a lanyard, and everyone is speaking English. It’s certainly transformed from how it was at the weekend, to just a few hours ago. And it feels slightly removed from being in France.

Day Four of judging the Social & Influencer category and the process is, well, progressing.

Having divided to conquer – half of us judges have each provided a provisional ranking of the best of the best from half of the 1,500 awards submissions each – we are now working together to re-rank as we all sift through the best of the best. And a curious process this is proving to be, as – due to the high quality of pretty much everything entered – we end up having to be highly critical of that high-quality work.

Screen Shot 2018-06-19 at 8.29.06 am.jpgThe process gets you to really focus, however, on which entries have truly broken the mould and challenged the boundaries in a category already performing at a high level in terms of being innovative and ground-breaking.

And without doubt, social media is being redefined – by the scale of its utility, given every campaign from TVC to PR now includes a social element as a matter of course through channels as diverse as gaming and dating apps melding interactivity with social components – for social media is no longer confined to the obvious platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.Screen Shot 2018-06-19 at 8.29.19 am.jpg

Ahead of this evening’s opening party and a few other events I hope to check out, I am now looking forward to a few hours down time to catch up on work and do a little exercise.

I know lots of people still come out to Cannes prepared for 2am and 3am finishes – it’s how Cannes has always been done. But I struggle to be as productive as I want to be on too little sleep. And this year of all years, it seems I am not alone as Cannes becomes increasingly about getting down to business without the bottomless entertainment budgets.

For as we resurface into the later afternoon sunshine, my fellow jury members and I are already looking forward to tomorrow when, after our preliminary shortlisting, the full and open, and often frank, discussions which everyone looks forward to will start in earnest. That’s when we will have our first chance to really pull apart and start investigating the top 200 or so Social & Influencer category entrants.

Bring it on!