Amir Kassaei’s candid Cannes Lions chat with Sonali Krishna from Brand Equity, India
You’ve got to love Amir Kassaei.
A polarising figure, DDB’s worldwide chief creative officer is never one to shy away from controversy and always, in every conversation, wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to the industry.
In 2012 in an interview with Campaign Brief’s Michael Lynch at the Cannes Lions Festival, Kassai called out the festival and accused jurors of bias – claiming that judges of certain global holding groups had been ordered to vote for work from their respective groups. The interview made headlines around the world and lead to Cannes tightening up the supervision of the judging process the following year.
Then, earlier this year, Kassaei called for an end for false recognitions as he justified DDB’s decision to cut back on award entries and to climb off the awards-seeking rat race.
At this year’s Cannes Lions, Kassaei sat down for a ‘candid chat’ with Brand Equity India’s Sonali Krishna and it proved equally entertaining, as well as though provoking.
In the interview Kassaei explains why DDB has cut back on awards entries and justifies this decision. He also voices his opinion on the the changing focus of the Festival, seemingly away from creativity and towards the large tech and media companies.
A couple of soundbite highlights for Campaign Brief from the interview with Sonali Krishna are:
“I’ve never met a client who says I want you to be network of the year otherwise you are not going to be my agency.”
“If I [was] a media guy I would kill myself… It’s like the most useless, worthless thing you can do in your life.”
“If you look at how Cannes has transformed over the last couple of years, it’s becoming more and more a technology and marketing fair and it’s less and less about the pure soul of creativity, and it’s a problem. That’s something the [Cannes Lions] organisation has to change, I believe.”
Kassaei doesn’t mention it, but it would be wrong to get the impression that he is completely anti Cannes and all other award shows – after all,even with reduced entries, DDB did still manage to win 101 Lions as a network at this year’s festival.
7 Comments
I wasn’t in Cannes this year but the year before was all about Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc. The seminars were all bullshit personalities and a waste of time and the actual awards seemed like an afterthought to everything else.
Amir makes an excellent point. The whiff of scam ads continue to permeate Cannes…
This guy Amir is calling an apple an apple. Spot on.
The industry is living in a narcissistic bubble wasting entire lives and billions of dollars.
Yes he certainly is…he should’ve done it BEFORE he used his awards to become global CCO.
Now that would’ve shown some big balls.
Agree with him on Cannes, the meaningless of being network of the year and what clients really in an agency partner.
However, a bit harsh on media though. If a creative agency works closely with their client’s media agency, outstanding work can happen. It is just that creative and media agencies have a tradition of animosity…
In one line, “incompetent journalist meets massive ego”.
That’s the plot of the 10-minute interview, if you want to save some time. (Ummmm, 10 minutes, to be exact.)
Also, he’s fatally misguided – park aside entries from the scam havens of Asia and South America (and that one bloke in the Middle East who was pumping it out at one stage). Then look at the rest. A lot of 100% legit, much loved by real consumers work does win in Cannes. It just happens to come from Europe, US, Japan, ANZ, etc.
How much is from DDB?
Don’t know, don’t keep track.
Very true. Europe, US, Japan, ANZ are the real deals. The rest are just pretenders.