First Cannes, First Awards Jury, First Entertainment Lions for Music

Peggy Walter, VP, director of celebrity services, talks about the camaraderie and work she witnessed at the ad festival in France

To understand how much it meant to be invited to be a juror for the first Entertainment Lions for Music at the 63rd Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, you first have to understand my career in advertising.

In my almost 30 years in the business, including my current position as VP, director of celebrity services for Leo Burnett USA, I have contributed to a lot of beautiful, creative, award-winning work that has driven strong business for our clients. But when the time rolls around to collect awards, I’m happily at the office, working on the next big idea and not at some show.

So the honor of being asked to be on a Cannes jury, if I can be forward for a minute, was not undeserved or intimidating, but certainly unexpected and a happy surprise.

A couple of years ago, I added to my role at Leo Burnett, partnering with Executive Producer Juan Woodbury and Director of Music Services Chris Clark to form HKX, an experiential offering from our agency. We were honored when the Cannes Lions chose HKX to produce the opening- and closing-night galas for the festival for the last three years. The success of those events, along with panels we created for the festival — and a boost from a key supporter within our company — clearly raised my profile. I got the nod.

I loved it all: I loved the prejudging, sitting on my sofa, watching submissions from around the world. It was a window into the parallels between my colleagues and their counterparts in offices all over the globe and how they use creativity to solve business problems for their clients.

I loved getting to know our jury: We were very diverse, representing six countries and a variety of specialties. Our jury president was a music director for an agency, but the other agency representatives came from creative and management roles. We had a CMO from a big brand, a label executive and two women working in concert promotion and brand engagement.

I loved the work: The case studies and the videos reflected thought, care, strategic thinking, engagement, execution, lots of money or very little money, big clients and little clients, charitable endeavors and global brands. But throughout, everything came back to “the idea” — the creative spark that set the work into motion. It was inspiring.

Our jury agreed more than we disagreed. It became clear that we all felt the weight of being first, of getting it right to set a way forward for future music juries at the festival. We spoke with passion about an interactive music video that elegantly used technology to deliver its message, a big musical Super Bowl execution based on a perfect strategic insight, work that used gamers to launch a rising music star, opera to save songbirds in Romania and an app that can literally save the lives of music lovers.

In the end, we honored two pieces of work with the Grand Prix. One, an advertisement for a German grocery store, an intimate piece of work so beautiful and insightful with music so lovely and well-chosen that the whole world took notice when it was released at Christmas (Watch: “Home for Christmas,” by Jung von Matt, Hamburg for Edeka, featuring “Dad,” from German singer Neele Ternes). And the second went to a controversial music video by a global superstar that was a brave and important anthem about race, gender and income inequality (Watch: Beyonce’s “Formation”).

The choices were unanimous, and I believe they set a high bar for the work in this category in the future.

It was an elevating and humbling and rewarding first time for all.

Peggy Walter is VP, director of celebrity services, for Leo Burnett USA.

Originally published at leoburnett.us.