Schofield’s Cannes Diary – part three
Chris Schofield, creative director of DraftFCB, Auckland, is representing New Zealand on theRadio jury and writesexclusively for Campaign Brief. Other Aussie and Kiwi jurors will be contributingexclusively to the CB Blog during the week, so make sure youcheck in daily, hourly, every minute…
Jetlag + alcohol = bad dreams. And last night was no different. Except Ihad two. The first was one was just plain weird. Mike O standing infront of me juggling Gold Lions and apologizing about something. And hewas incredible with these Lions, flipping them around, behind the back,catching them on his neck, putting on quite a show. ‘Come on Mike’ Isaid ‘this is clearly a dream, the least you could do is apologise tome in real life.’ And he nodded.
Worse yet was the second one. A plane crash dream. And as far as myworst ever dreams go this one was right up there. It went like this,the plane engine catches fire, plane dives, hostess screams ‘we’regoing down’. me in the crash position for 2 or so minutes,, plane hitsthe ground. I jump out of bed. Angry, sweaty, relieved, happy andreally looking forward to the 3 or so plane rides home.
By the time you read this you’ll probably know the results of tonight’s radio lions, so I won’t go on.
Yesterdaywe finished awarding the metal, and it was an interesting process.Interesting in that there were no serious arguments or tanties fromanybody. It was pretty much an across the board consensus on most ofthe work. And if you’ve ever been involved in any ad judging you’llknow this never happens. And I will say that this is a fairly generousyear over all, which is good I reckon in light of the notoriouslystingy year last year.
There are a couple of surprises, all goodones tho. And I can guarantee there will be a few happy aussies andkiwis. -Maybe not as happy as the guys from Special with their GrandPrix – but then again they maybe. Just maintaining my professionalismthere. But well done Special, big congratulations.
This yearlots awards went to non-English speaking countries, which proves theaccessibility of radio from a craft and budget point of view. I evenremember a quite flash entry from Guatamala. Which is great for the ongoing relevance of the medium.
What else, we just had thepress conference this morning, which was a great experience actually.I’ve got to say Cannes is rather very full of self importance – the wayadvertising should be I guess.
During the press conferencethere we lots of very curious parties – the South Americans inparticular, they’re mad for ads these guys – and some quite curlyquestions. One of which our English judge had to field, and you’ll seewhy it was curly when the results come through tonight.
It’sfunny to mention that the South African judge blasted his vuvuzela hornhalfway through, and as you know those things are deafening. Then inhis South African accent yelled, ‘The Power Of Audio mate!’
That’sit for now, tonight there’s a debate on about the role of creativity inshaping the world hosted by Yahoo! with guests Jeff Goodby and BenStiller. Looking forward to that. Oh and I met Howard Draft lastnight, the owner of our company. Seems like a good guy.
Ka Kite.