Archibald / Williams Sydney executive creative director Matt Gilmour wants a Lion King, or better still, he’d settle for a clear winner at Cannes…
In readying myself for my pilgrimage to Cannes, as I packed my suitcase with as many pastel linen shirts and espadrilles as one man is safely allowed to carry through French customs, I wonder who’ll win big this year… who will ‘WIN’ Cannes 2015?
And it strikes me that nobody actually wins Cannes. There's no massive drum roll and red carpet, paparazzi moment for the one piece of work that will define an entire year of advertising. Was this an error? Surely within the space of the whole week of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity madness they could fit in one extra Lion presentation? And who wouldn’t want to win it? Not me. Shouldn’t one of the greatest ad shows in the world hold up one piece of work and say, this is the best! Why isn't there a best of show? Why isn’t there a Palme d'Or? Why isn’t there a Lion King?
Perhaps I’m overreacting. It’s pretty easy to figure out who the big winner is; you just tally up who has won the most Grand Prixs, right? Well, maybe not. When there's one big winner like ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ that picks up five Grand Prixs and a tonne of Golds, or ‘Harvey Nicols’ last year with four Grand Prixs it’s easier to claim clear ‘WINNER OF CANNES’ status. But what if there’s not one ‘clear’ winner?
Imagine, if you will, a year when a single piece of work doesn’t stretch across more than one Grand Prix category. Imagine a year when every category has its own unique Grand Prix winner. I for one would feel lost. I don’t want to start counting Gold’s, Silver’s and Bronzes. Why don’t the organisers of Cannes liberate us from all this mathematical nonsense and just bloody well tell us what the best of the year is?
The way I see it, it’s not much extra work needed, just get all of the Jury Presidents together to fight it out, maybe even on stage? Press vs. Titanium, Film vs. Media, you see what I’m saying? the fight of all fights to end the year with a definitive result.
Because maybe at the end of the week the big winner is not always the piece of work that’s collected the most Grand Prixs. Maybe the ‘WINNER OF CANNES’ isn’t what we mere calculator toting mathematicians think it is? We could get it wrong.
I want a shiny, liony trophy that says as clearly as the pastels in my suitcase – the ‘WINNER OF CANNES 2015’ is...