Tag Archives: cannes

Cannes Young Lions 2014

Posted on February 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

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The Cannes Young Lions 2014 competition for creative teams under 28 has just opened (deadline is April 4). In past years, digital entry levels have unfortunately never  reflected the size of our industry or the depth of talent within it. I have been Chairman as well as juror of this competition and have seen and written about how teams have struggled to enter top quality work. The entry levels reached only 25% of the Print entries which in light of where the work is going, didn’t make any sense.

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Reasons for it were twofold in my opinion. Firstly, it was (and still is) challenging to succinctly explain a digital campaign. Keeping the core idea separate from the complexity of execution is a skill that not every junior team has mastered yet. Secondly, the competition had until now required the teams to actually build their concepts. Which had to be in the format of display banners. This “smallest common denominator” approach led to a watering down of concepts. Teams entered what, according to their technical skill level, they thought they could actually build in Flash and HTML.

In 2014 it it is now no longer required to build the concept a.k.a. a display banner. This is going to broaden the scope of the ideas significantly, for both the local competition and the international version in Cannes, France. Reactive’s young ones in Melbourne and Sydney will challenge themselves to be among the best young digital creative teams in Australia. And I am looking forward to their results.

If you feel like you got what it takes, stop lurking behind your more senior colleagues. Enter, win, make your way to Cannes and take out the prize for best digital creative team in the world. But before you practice your acceptance speech, you should probably start by entering the first round before April 4:
http://www.newscorpaustralia.com/young-lions-digital-competition

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How to win Gold Lions at Cannes

Posted on April 8, 2013 | 1 comment

It’s awards season – a painful, exhilirating, mental and rewarding time in agencies. The biggest whopper of an award show is coming up and tons of case studies are being edited and submitted as we speak. All to win some Gold Lions at Cannes. So at Adverblog, we thought it would be helpful to take a group-wide look at the Art of the Case Study. We describe some of the obvious and some of the not-so-obvious characteristics of a true winner (in terms of case study). First, have a quick look at Lars Bastholm’s  tips from 2009:

As the case movie becomes an art form in itself, the question is: Which awards show will be the first to actually give out an award for “Best Case Study” ?

Below are my points, which I wrote after most of the other (more creative tips) had been made by the other Adverblog editors already. I decided to add three rather mundane items. They are nevertheless highly annoying if not thought about before hitting the magic ‘Submit’ button.

  1. Go easy on the ‘Never been done before’ – chances are I have indeed seen something similar before. Which isn’t bad at all. Only if you try to make me believe you were the first to ever think of connecting Twitter with your mum’s Facebook page.
  2. Don’t use a custom video player and don’t put it on your shitty agency video server. Use YouTube like every other dweeb in the world. If I have to suck your 60 megabyte creative bonanza through a straw from your crappy PC that runs the rest of your country’s advertising case studies – I am in a bad mood already. Nothing kills your thrilling case dead in its track like a stuttering video player.
  3. Have a compelling submission page:  good layout, title at the top (why not in the style of the campaign?), start with the case study film, bullet point the main points of the challenge, strategy, idea, execution. And follow with the long copy below. I will read it when I am intrigued but don’t make me wade through long-winded, inflated hyperbole before I get to the idea and video. And no agency branding, please. Duh!

Have a read of the full article on Adverblog and please feedback what you thought was most helpful. And if you are into (old skool term) “Cyber” like me, keep in mind some of the thoughts that Iain Tait voices here about the category.

And at the end of the day, compelling ideas present themselves.

Even the winner of Gold Lions at Cannes.

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Young Cyber Lion hopefuls on their way to Cannes

Posted on May 24, 2011 | 1 comment

The Young Cyber Lions competition finished last week, and as a sign of hope for our talent-starved industry, the round of 2011 brought a record number of entries. The winning team’s entry, conceived and produced within 24 hours as per the rules, can be seen here.

Cyber winner entry 2011

Cyber winner entry by Gene Brutty and Tim Seddon

Two things stood out for me as Chairman of the jury. Firstly, the very deserved winning team was from Perth, which produces a good crop of talent (100% of Cyber and 50% of the Media winners). Perth might just not be able to hold onto it for too long. Secondly, the Cyber entries still only amount to 25% of the print entries, grossly misrepresenting the type of work flowing through almost every agency in the world.

Still too many young Australian creatives find making a great poster more achievable, or even more interesting. But at the same time, we label them ‘interactive natives’, view them as part of a well-connected generation. Even the most senior participant couldn’t have been older than 15 when sending his first email or browsing for her friends party photos.

What’s certain is that the odds of winning a Cyber ticket to Cannes were still a lot better than in any other discipline. In the interest of ever growing creative field, let’s hope the race in 2012 will be a much tougher one.

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Posted in Advertising, interactivity

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Give The Boxer some love

Posted on May 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Entries for Good Work on YouTube have closed and soon the jury under guidance from Craig Davis will pick a winning entry. I am quite chuffed that my colleague Henry Hall (with the help of some other lovely people here at Mojo) has entered his video. It is called ‘The Boxer‘ and was conceived and produced as a response to a brief from SOS – Casas de Acolhida. The Brazilian organisation works for the protection of children aged 0 – 6 from domestic violence.

Being a dad myself this stuff cuts pretty close to the bone, so please give the film some love by liking it here.

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1 Caples for 6 Beers – and the whole award credit business

Posted on December 17, 2009 | 2 comments

Holler has received the good news that 2 1 finalist at the Caples Awards in New York went to us and BMF. The project “6 Beers of Separation” was entered by BMF in several categories and among others received accolades in Interactive. I strongly recommend coming to an agreement between digital specialists and (for lack of a better term) ATL agencies. After some intense and ultimately rewarding campaigns with BMF we now came to an agreement which will take some of the stress out of crediting who for what at award time. And nobody needs more cat fights at Cannes.

Aggressive Cat is aggressive

Michael Lebowitz vs David Lubars

All entries on tightly integrated campaigns will be entered jointly and effort, credits and fees shared. Interactive/Online-focussed categories receive a Holler/BMF entry, categories that look at the integration/360-aspect of the campaign feature a BMF/Holler crediting. Campaigns such as “6 Beers” (Tooheys Extra Dry) and “Birds vs Humans (Tooheys Extra Dry 5 Seeds) rely so much on the interactive work and at the same time stem from unique narrative, style and ideas that it doesn’t make much sense to separate the agencies behind it.

Update: It was my error to assume that the Online category would be about our part of the campaign. It wasn’t and therefore the 1 Caples is the only finalist where Holler shares a mention with BMF. Hope this makes everything clear and takes any non-existing controversy out of the game.

Up The Trees / Tooheys Extra Dry 5 Seeds

Up The Trees - Interactive Adventure

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