Pre-Cannes musings & the weight of judgment
As a first-time Cannes Lions jury member, I approached the somewhat terrifying task of judging 330+ cases with much trepidation. Not just for the scale of the exercise, but because of what was at stake; the accolade of a Lion. These awards should be (and are) the “Oscars of our industry”, as I heard a colleague explain, so should be treated with due respect.
There’s a weight of responsibility here that I haven’t felt… since … sitting on a criminal jury case, but that is a story for another time. And I don’t say that flippantly! Genuinely, I have been terribly concerned with making the ‘right’ decision and wondering exactly how one does that.
This first stage of judging begins online. All judges were greeted with a message from the Jury President advising us, somewhat enigmatically, to ‘judge the context of the creativity’.
Practically, what that means is watching hundreds of videos, reading through their associated case studies and trying to determine a score on a scale of 1–9 (and you want to be a 9). We grade all entries based on 4 criteria: Insight & idea, Strategy & targeting, Execution, Impact & results and it’s this last element that I’ve been most concerned with so far.
Perhaps because I’m very much aligned with our Vizeum mantra of ‘accelerating business growth through media’ or perhaps it’s because I want to believe I work in an industry with real purpose, but what I’m looking to see in the ‘results’ section is a very real & very clear story of successfully delivering against business objectives. I’ve been surprised and disappointed to see this element so frequently neglected.
It’s easy to judge those cases that were very clearly only entered because the creative execution was fantastic, but for ones that seem great but lack results-based substantiation I’ve been conflicted in my judgment.
I saw plenty of cases that had great insights, ideas, strategies & executions that then fell apart at the last hurdle. Many a case seemed to be trying to overwhelm with you with the number of zeros at the end of their media impressions that they neglected to explain why that was important and what it did for the brand- if anything at all.
Without evidence, I can’t work out if a great idea was just a clever thought or if it changed a whole category. And in the interests of ‘making the right decision’ that’s been incredibly frustrating.
Whilst I can’t be certain that I am judging appropriately, one thing I do take comfort in is the rigorous and vigilant system (data driven, of course) that the Cannes Lions employ. Behind the scenes, clever algorithms are at play ensuring that your spread of scores make sense- at least mathematically speaking- and highlighting any anomalies. Additionally, all judges’ scores for entries that are within their own network are discounting, thus eliminating any preferential bias.
Data solutions aside, any other qualms I have with ‘making the right decision’ should be remedied at the next phase: the in-person, full jury deliberations that happen over the week in Cannes.
I’m looking forward to the discussions and debate.
I’m looking forward to challenging decisions and being challenged myself.
I’m looking forward to being validated in my belief that these awards do recognise the best work in our industry.
And I truly hope that my fellow jury members and I can collectively agree that in awarding Lions for ‘media’ we are making the decision based on seeing real business results for the clients that invested in our agency recommendations. We should not be content to minimise our influence & impact to just delivering cool creative and buying the odd billion impressions. It’s simply not good enough.
In terms of what I can say about the awards I’ve reviewed so far (without giving anything away) is that 2017 was NOT, in fact, the ‘year’ of Mobile. Nor was it the ‘year’ of AI & VR. It wasn’t even the ‘year’ of Data Driven Creativity.
We have all been deceived.
2017 was the year of Beer…
Izzy Hedges is EVP, Vizeum Global, LA
