A Dubliner at the Dubai Lynx Advertising Festival

A couple of Sundays ago I jumped on a plane from Dublin to Dubai at 11am in the morning and arrived to a neon lit Dubai motorway at 3am Dubai time. Dubai is a city that has been created  from the desert, which is pretty mind blowing when you see the scale of it for the first time. 

This was one of those situations in life literally when you are totally going solo. On your Todd, no wingman. It had the potential to just be an ordinary judging experience. The usual dark jury room for three days filled with a group of random strangers put together to objectively look at the work coming out of the MENA region. 

However it turns out when you fly people in from all around the world who are passionate about film craft a funny thing can happen. You can become a mini family for a few days. I would call our family a little crazy and a melting pot of personalities. But I think that was the key as to why it worked. 

We had a very outspoken Dutch judge who was a super duelling partner for a strong minded Canadian judge. Mix that in with a funny and charming Italian/Iranian and top with a  Spanish gent who we nicknamed Super Mario, a New Yorker and the Irishman who is writing this article (and not to forget our President from Oz) and things get interesting. The jury was both gender balanced but also balanced out in personalities which led to everybody’s voice being heard.

Apart from the judging experience in the evening time we as a jury experienced some incredible Middle Eastern hospitality. Our whole jury got invited to one of the judges’ mother’s house. We were greeted at the door by the whole family and then out of nowhere a Lebanese feast emerged. We ate a myriad of Lebanese dishes from Lebanese Fattoush salad to Tabbouleh. This was the Middle Eastern collective warmth that I had been told about, the exchanging of life stories around a table in a beautiful back garden in Dubai. It was a million miles away from what can sometimes be a day of judging followed by a pizza in your hotel room before the next day of judging.

The following day’s judging led to no punches being pulled. Arguments were had. Laughs were let out. There was the type of energy and debate that every good jury room needs. There is a lot of tablet scoring for the first day where the jury is putting together its shortlist from which all this work is taken into the second day where metal is decided upon. Awards in the MENA region are super important to the creatives and agencies. As it is a young advertising industry an award could have a significant effect on a creative’s / director’s / production company’s business and life.

We watched over 196 pieces of work in the film craft category. Several themes emerged from various brands and regions. In film craft there were many pieces which tackled the newly founded freedom for women in Saudi who are now legally allowed to drive. There was a campaign of powerful films for Du Telco by Leo Burnett Dubai called Fire & Crash which addressed how people need to stop posting unethical footage on social media and finally a piece that promoted a child safety app for viewing YouTube called Tuby, which tackled the dangers of children getting caught up in viral challenges such as Blue whale and Momo. 

There was also a mix of comedic work for an Elite wafer brand and some nice copywriting about the benefits of a Shattaf, which is a type of hygiene apparatus found in many bathrooms in Dubai. One really good idea the about the festival is that we were given a cultural expert in each jury room to make sure we had someone to ask about cultural nuances that might have an effect on the way we judged some of the work. 

The overall take home from judging was that no matter where you are in the world the best work always stands out. It has a certain quality where the total is greater than the sum of the parts. Every little detail counts whether in sound, cinematography, casting or script. Along with a director’s vision this makes the work stand out and be able to compete on a global stage. Dubai has the ambition for this. Dubai has a relatively new advertising industry and huge ambition to compete. And if the opportunity comes your way to judge at these awards I’d say grab the experience with both hands.