How to win more Lions: tips from the Cannes Jury

A large part of working in marketing and advertising centres on hope, says Colenso BBDO Chief Creative Officer Simon Vicars.

“We hope that our CD [Creative Director] will like the work, we hope that our client will buy the work, we hope that it’ll work and then we hope that it’ll win.”

Those wins he’s talking about are those coveted lion-shaped trophies, awarded at the annual Cannes Festival of Creativity.

Often criticised for being overindulgent, Cannes is fundamental to the lifeblood of our industry, says Comms Council CEO Simon Lendrum.

“It exposes our collective work to the world, it attacts clients, it attracts talent to New Zealand and it should be celebrated.”

And so earlier this week, Lendrum and his team gathered the industry together at Auckland’s Movenpick Hotel to recognise the Kiwi work that won big at Cannes in June.

The event also gave attendees an insight into the judging process, as they heard from a panel of leaders from Aotearoa who were 2024 Cannes jurors.

A cheat sheet for future entries

The panel was led by Vicars, who has a career tally 53 Lions, and was this year’s Jury President for the Cannes Audio and Radio category.

He was joined by Rory Gallery, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Special; Christie Cooper, Creative Director at The Monkeys; and Raymond Otene McKay, Chief Creative Officer at Run Aotearoa.

Vicars likened the panel discussion to a cheat sheet, encouraging the audience to take notes and use the insights to win more.

Of 27,000 entries at Cannes, 3% win a Lion and 0.02% win a Grand Prix, so the more knowledge on the processes, the better, he says. Especially because Aotearoa doesn’t have as many instantly recognisable brands and no way near the same investment, infrastructure, or visibility as other countries.

“When you’re up against DoorDash, which is a ginormous thing doing ginormously ambitious things, it just gets harder.

“But of course, all those elements have incubated this mutant kind of industry down here – it creates ideas that are recklessly ambitious and the world loves them.”

Gallery was on Creative Strategy jury and says it’s a really competitive category with about 809 entries, which have a number of “gates” to get through to be considered.

The first is asking whether the work would have happened without a great strategy behind it – if not, then don’t read any further. If yes, is the work exceptional?

“I’m choosing that word carefully because one of the lessons that I’ve come away from Cannes with is that, actually, great work is not good enough in many cases,” says Gallery.

Because the category is all about strategy, the third gate is to make sure the entry shows results. Finally, write a really good entry.

“There were some really good case studies in there that just didn’t win because they didn’t do a very good job of explaining their strategies well.”

Sell your entry in a soundbite

Aotearoa has a high standard of award writing overall, but Gallery’s personal tip for a good entry is one that is detailed and factual.

“So if you have a great piece of work, really sweat the detail because you’ll be scrutinised.”

Remember that the jury aren’t just judges, they are also advocates for the work on show – so a pithy soundbite, or a “strategy in a nutshell”, can go a long way for your entries, says Gallery.

Cooper was one of two agency members in Cannes Entertainment Lions for Music jury, among music producers, music video directors and composers.

She says it was a great learning opportunity.

“It really made me grateful for any awards that have won because honestly it’s hard to get anything through.”

The decision-making process was tough but efficient, with shortlists for bronze rapidly cut from 30 to 15. Strong personalities among the jury made for an interesting time, and Cooper speaks on how a single voice can shut down an entry because it’s not to their taste, or they disagree with the content.

Tell a good story

McKay was on the Cannes Design jury and says that while the design has to be a standout, the entry must still tell a good story.

Minds tended to change throughout the process too, he adds.

“What actually won the Grand Prix was not anything that we thought it would it would be, so that was really interesting in itself.”

The Grand Prix in question was a Peruvian concrete company that installed tactile tiles in the pavements of Miraflores, providing assistance to visually impaired and blind people.

It’s a project with scale – throughout Peru and beyond – and the design content is open-source, says McKay.

This highlights a key difference: big brand attachments matter less in the Design category compared to some of the other Cannes categories, he notes.

“We were just looking at the best work… we have all these other weird ones that no one’s going to know who they are.

“This piece of concrete kept coming back and beating the big design agencies, helping blind people navigate their cities… with 2 million blind people in the world, it was pretty cool.”

Vicars used “Phone it in for Skinny” – a Colenso campaign that won Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes Festival – to acknowledge that when it comes to winning, there are some aspects that can’t be controlled.

A campaign that took two years to sell, this ended up being a factor in its success. Back in 2021, Cannes was focused on purpose-driven campaigns, but by 2023, this had changed to commercial creativity.

“There is an element of be kind to yourselves because some things are just outside of your control for marketers and agencies alike, and just have that relentless optimism that its going to be okay,” says Vicars.

Trophy time

Lendrum then re-presented this year’s Lions trophies.

And the winners were:

• Dentsu Aotearoa received two bronze and one silver Lion for Aid Aisle
• DDB won two bronze Lions for Add ons, one for Something Different, two silvers for The Greenprint and one for Correct the Internet
• Special won bronze for Last Performance
• Colenso won a bronze Lion for Meowzer, a bronze, silver, gold and a Grand Prix for Adoptable.

“It’s pretty amazing that we consistently turn up to Cannes and come back weighed down with metal,” says Lendrum. He recommends checking out website lovethework.com, a repository of Cannes award winners, for more insights.

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