Cannes: dear oh dear…
Last week there were a lot of retweets of Dave Trott’s analysis of Cannes (full interview here):
Do you think ad festivals like the Cannes Lions can change this?
No. Ad festivals prevent creativity. You’re not doing advertising for six million people in the street anymore, but for ten people on the jury, and for a few clients. You win an award, because then Martin Sorrell will give you a raise, and Martin Sorrell can go and tell Unilever that he won an award, and Unilever will maybe give him another piece of digital business. How has that got anything to do with the job we’re supposed to be doing?
Despite big, high-profile, ‘proper’ campaigns winning Lions, we still had at least three Grands Prix awarded to work of utter, steaming bullshit: two for the Volvo Paint excretion and one for the Iron Fish mendacity.
Of course there are mixed consequences to this: I guess the publicity around the Iron Fish thing might result in the entrants being stripped of their prize. Or not. It’s not as if Cannes is a bastion of integrity. And I’d imagine that the Paint guys won’t be held to account at all for their truth-fudging lack of creativity, allowing them to pop those two Grands Prix up on a shelf and slurp up the pay rises they bring. Good for them. They played the game and won. And that’s all this is: a game. For every Epic Split or World Gallery (by the way, the Paint thing actually beat the Ice Bucket Challenge in one category. The jury involved should hang their heads in permanent shame for that one) there’s a scamtastic, industry-cheapening cack heap to create a big gain for the people involved but another step back for the credibility of advertising as a whole.
It also undermines the credibility of Cannes and the other winners. Did those press ads for 24-hour cycling actually run? More than once? Did they move the 24-hour cycling needle? Who knows… All I know is I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran once in the creative agency’s in-house magazine, and that’s a shame. Of course this isn’t the first year this kind of thing has happened, but the accumulation of fakery and half-truths has led to a weary cynicism that if you haven’t actually seen the work in the real world then it’s definitely bullshit.
So I’d add to Dave’s point: yes, the whole thing has now become so contorted that we’re holding up little bagatelles designed purely for the twelve people on a jury as the finest our collective minds have to offer; but beyond that the organisers of the Festival are complicit in the perpetuation of this. Clearly the terms of entry are flexible enough for agencies to spin base metal into gold under the noses of the jurors, and until that stops the carousel of bullshit continues.
Does that all have a deleterious effect? Jeff Goodby seems to think so.
And is the national press similarly dismayed? Indeed.
But what do we do about it?
One of the commenters on last week’s Cannes post had this to say:
I just don’t think you can slag off Volvo Life Paint too much though – Grey played the game. Awards are an industry-facing nonsense – and I kind of feel like Grey appropriating a product and using it for a client isn’t all that different to every team in the world scouring Youtube for inspiration and then using it for telly ads.
It’s all cheating. But who gives a fuck, we’re an industry full of cunts innit…
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Stop creating scam.
Stop approving scam.
Stop celebrating scam.
If you’re a juror, stop awarding scam.
If you’re the head of a holding company or chairman of an agency, stop remunerating scammers.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Be the solution, not the problem.
Peace out.
x
Exactly right.
(Just so we’re all clear. The Cannes ‘festival of creativity’ is a commercial enterprise, owned and run by Top Right Group “an international, business-to-business media group” that owns Emap, amongst other things. It reports on the commercial successes of the Cannes festival in its annual report. It’s about as far away from a genuine, egalitarian, merit-based awards system as you can get. It’s just a big corporate jolly paid for by big companies that makes profit for another big company.)
At work, every time I suggest an idea that has already been done in some form, it goes on the ‘David Wall of Copy’. It’s shameful how big agencies have taken existing products this year, done a little jazzy marketing, knocked out a microsite, and been rewarded with a Grand Prix. It makes us all look bad as professional creatives. It’s like I said recently, everyone wants to be the second person to do something for the first time. (That way, they’ve already got the pictures for the moodboard and case study to prove that ‘it will definitely work’)
CannesLions is an old-school junket. It’s all about exclusivity…it’s meant to help differentiate agency higher-ups when the Porsche in the agency parking lot doesn’t make one feel special enough anymore. It’s what Thorsten Veblen called conspicuous consumption. For CFOs it should call for outrage, but for everyone else, it calls for pity. After all, people go there so they can say they “were at Cannes” or “won at Cannes,” as if those within earshot would think they were talking about the real Cannes–an event held slightly earlier in the year for people who take the bigger risks in life.
Would we have as much scam if clients bought better work?
Ben, why couldn’t Apple just turn down their award in protest? and make a speech about all the scam going on. It’s not like Apple/Mal need a crappy award to tell themselves they’re good.
What i’d like to know is not why dominoes won a grand prix for emoji pizza ordering – which seems like a pretty basic business idea to me, but why they need a 1:15 long case study http://creativity-online.com/work/dominos-emoji-ordering/42507
Completely agree. Cannes is dead. Suicide.
The only reason to get genuinely upset about Cannes limiting effective advertising is that you want the wheels of capitalism to turn as effectively as possible.
But if you’re not that arsed about businesses maximising their sales to get the economy working at its capitalist best, then what’s the problem?It’s about the least important thing imaginable.
Good luck to the winners. Like you say, it’s a game.
@ Anon 5: I don’t think that would make much difference. Besides, it would be kind of odd to enter an award then protest when you won it.
Perhaps next year everyone could do what I once suggested at a BBDO CD conference: don’t enter any awards and spend the money you save on worthwhile causes.
Oddly enough, BBDO decided not to go for that one.
But, but, but…
…haven’t awards always been merely a marketing tool for agencies?
No-one outside of the marketing industries ever gave a brown lion who was winning what at award shows – scam or no scam.
I’m not talking about blantant plagarism here. That’s indefensible bollocks.
But the idea of professional agencies and professional creatives using professional award shows to showcase their creative chops seems… reasonable.
Don’t it?
The greatest injustice that I witnessed was that Under Armour campaign trumping the ALS Bucket Challenge for the cyber GP.
Am I really supposed to applaud a campaign that encourages consumers to take inspiration from a multi-millionaire super model because she occasionally gets a few nasty tweets over a campaign which spawned from the brain of a genuine ALS sufferer and engaged everyone from George Bush to Lady Gaga?
I’m not sure I agree, Anonymouse. Surely it’s okay to be upset about it if you feel it’s having a negative effect on the line of work you do, or encouraging the wrong behaviour in young creatives, or rewarding deceit? If it really is a game then let’s stop calling it creative or advertising awards and call it the creative gymnastics or something.
Ben I think you’re right, the only way for people to not enter – and really for the people doing the best work to not enter that. When none of the best best gets awards, maybe people will start to look at them differently?
Then again, it’s all about the Gunn report chart anyway for these big agencies, so maybe that won’t have any effect on those big agency schmucks anyway.
*sorry, second para there is meant to say “Ben I think you’re right, the only way *is* for people to not enter – and really for the people doing the best work to not enter that. When none of the best *work* gets awards, maybe people will start to look at them differently?”
Monday morning…
Of course it’s all ridiculous. But it has an affect on our industry beyond whether or not you want the wheels of business to run smoother. When I first started in advertising the creative directors were people who’d made big, famous ads, all of which came from a brief that needed answering. They had the talent needed to help the creative department answer briefs with great work. The last agency I worked at had an ECD who had won a bunch of golds for scam work and had never done anything else. And he was, surprise surprise, awards obsessed and couldn’t give a shit about the day to day work that gets seen by people. Because the hard part of our job, the bit that needs talent, is the ability to take a difficult brief and answer it with original, surprising and perhaps even award winning work. And then the really hard part of our job, the part that used to be done by the account men and women who no longer exist, the really hard part was persuading a client to buy the work.
While I appreciate the tenacity it takes to craft scam work and find a client willing to risk nothing to run it, it takes a lot less talent. And because everybody knows that it’s a game, it diminishes the respect agencies and clients have for the creative department.
The only way to change all of this is by doing famous work for real clients that’s better than the scam.
I nominated twize ‘best taxi journey under 10 km’.
Adddison Lee Bucharest win for car powered by chicken carcass.
Now I shit the brick.
‘Engaged everyone from George Bush to Lady Gaga’
Game Before the Game and Made of Black are really dull. Am I crazy or what?
Pissing into the wind. Greed will win every time. Holding companies have essentially lionized the behavior in lieu of actual creative thinking.
Come on Ben – give us an idea of what you thought should have been awarded? Great work for genuine clients…… I know I’m not the only one who thinks Tena Men should have won a Gold.
George, the problem is I have no idea what’s out there that could be considered ‘Great work for genuine clients’. I’ve seen a lot of great work and a lot of work for genuine clients, but rather have both collided.
And, as I said in the post, these days, if I haven’t seen it and it’s not for a big company I assume it’s scam of one kind or another.
But I’d be delighted to be pointed in the right direction.
If it was a creative awards then creatives would be allowed to go.
Our agency said creatives could only go if they paid themselves and took a whole bunch of suits and had a lovely time.
Aside from Volvo life paint being a massive scam, what I don’t (even if it wasn’t a scam) is how it won at all. It’s not even a good idea. Surely if you’re volvo and you are talking about road safety then they should be telling us how their cars can spot danger. Not saying here’s something so you glow in the dark so you don’t get hit.
That is an excellent point.
@Butterbean, you are completely correct. And i guess the current state of Cannes is a mirror image of the reality our business. like it or not.
It was last year, in response to John Hegarty talking about Cannes losing focus because of all the scam, the Chief Creative Officer of Lowe (now Mullen) stated, “I have to disagree with John. I agree that there is a lot of work created just for awards, but think of it (Cannes) like a Formula 1 operation. Honda has a F1 programme just to win races. But also what they learn from testing becomes part of the car’s engine.” And that folks is how one of our industry leaders justifies scam – he was also President of the outdoor jury that year too. Funny that.
I’ve always found advertising awards a little sad.
It’s all a bit needy for my liking.