Ronald Ng’s Direct Lions report from Cannes
RonaldNg, Chief Creative Officer, BBDO/Proximity Malaysia is on this year’sCannes Lions Direct Jury. The judging is already underway and each dayRonald is keeping us up to date with the progress. Here’s his DAY THREE report.
Going into the third day of Direct judging, I had a pretty good feeling. After all, the first two days were pretty dismal and there was no other way to go but up.
And voila! The winds on the Cote d’Azur seemed to have blown a different way today. No topless grannies on the beach. But loads of seriously big hitters today.
Our group feasted on a beautiful set of Integrated campaigns. Yes, there was a whole lot that qualified as ‘integrated’ only because of fat media budgets. The ideas were small, and the extensions were just ‘matching luggage’.
But the cream rose to the top soon enough. Fantastic work from Belgium,Spain, Australia and New Zealand. They had a mix of everything. Bigideas, celebrity endorsements (with a twist), hard-working productsell, high public interest, PR hype, good taste and amazing results.You may know some of them already.
How things have changed in just one day. Yesterday, I was looking forreasons to justify the poor standards on Day 1 and 2. The economy,slashed budgets, fewer people in the agency, etc etc. But now, I am solooking forward to the next two days when we will be judging the Lions.And on Sunday, when we debate on the Big One.
Hopefully we’ll see a good bunch from Asia. We don’t seem to be as wellrepresented as we were in previous years, but let’s see. Thinkpositive, think positive.