“Relentless Commitment” Wins, But Category Mistakes Are Costly, Say Mike Felix, Dave Bowman, Mim Haysom

A “relentless” commitment to an idea reigns supreme, according to Mim Haysom, Mike Felix, Dave Bowman, and Aimee Buchanan.

But the panel of Cannes jurors agreed many award entries are plagued by a misunderstanding of the category.

Speaking at ‘Cannes Download’ in Sydney yesterday, part of Advertising Council Australia and AWARD’s This Way Up festival, WPP Media ANZ CEO and Media juror Aimee Buchanan pointed to ‘Olympic Curry’, a McDonald’s France campaign leveraging basketballer Stephen Curry’s Gold-Medal winning performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

After defeating the French team in the final, McDonald’s France tweeted it was removing its curry dipping sauce for “obvious reasons”.

Despite winning a Gold Lion, Aimee thought it may have done better in a different category.

“I wish it had entered into the influencer and creative section of media,” she explained.

“I think there's a really good lesson for everyone looking to enter: look at the categories. I wish I could have moved it around … it would have picked up a lot of awards, but it was just in the wrong category quite frequently.”

Dave, Publicis Groupe’s AUNZ CCO, added the festival has “a long history” of work that “doesn’t fit anywhere”. He noted it takes two-thirds of a jury to move an entry from the shortlist to either Bronze, Silver, or Gold Lion status, so clarity around category is important.

“That's one of the hard and fast rules of Cannes … they won't let you migrate something from one category to another. Definitely read the subcategory details.”

Aimee also pointed to Change the Ref’s ‘Final Exam’, a video game in which players must survive a school shooting, which was contentious in the jury room for similar reasons.

“A lot of people in the room didn't feel like it was truly media, [but] a creative idea,” she said.

“We didn’t understand the role media played. Is making a game media? And so the debate really became a philosophical conversation around what ‘media’ is.”

While the room ultimately decided to take an “expansive” view, it took more than two hours of discussion to reach this consensus. ‘Final Exam’ received a Gold and a Silver in the category.

Dave, who judged the Social and Creator category this year, added, “Categories are difficult. Sometimes it feels like you're judging the template rather than the work. I know how important it still is to discuss those things, [but] I find them very hard to tease apart, because for a piece of film … everything should come back to the insight or the idea.

“You have something that the audience experienced, that made you feel a certain way, and all the reasons for doing everything should come back to the idea, [rather than] being pulled apart and judged separately.”

Suncorp brand and customer experience EGM and Creative Data juror Mim agreed some work “missed out” because it was entered in the wrong category, despite the central idea being popular with the jury room.

She recalled e.l.f Beauty’s ‘So Many Dicks’ -- a study of US Fortune 500 boards, which found more men named Richard than women – which was submitted in multiple categories across Data.

“It was very clever and a great use of data,” Mim said. “The way they presented the data, the data mining, and the use of that insight was very, very good for the category we were judging.”

However, the work was still contentious in the room.

“Some people didn't feel that it was a very sophisticated use of data, and shouldn’t be awarded in a data-based category.

“What was more interesting was the importance that your cultural background played with this one. I thought it was hilarious and genius because of the play on words, but there were a couple of people on the jury who found it offensive, disrespectful, and demeaning to men.

“It made me question my own perspective. It ranked highly in the first round of shortlisting across pretty much every subcategory it was in. But once we were in the room debating all of the work, it dropped out of quite a few categories once we started voting.”

Mike added cultural conversations could sway an entire jury room.

“We could be totally swayed by someone saying, ‘In my country, that's a big deal,’” he explained.

“I could easily move things up or down based on my context being different … but in the room, you feel an obligation to ask how others feel about something. Your opinion might change based on that.”

Dentsu Aotearoa co-CCO and Cannes Film juror Mike said jurors notice ideas that “haven’t been fully committed to” and aren’t “even close” to where they could be.

Telstra’s Grand Prix-winning ‘Better on a Better Network’, he said, is an example of an idea executed with full commitment.

“You could have taken three talents that represented Australia and made three cute videos, and I don't think it would have been anywhere near what it was with 26,” Mike said. “The scale of it … the level of craft.”

Edelman and Progresso’s ‘Soup Drops’, which turned its chicken-noodle soup into a hard candy drop, is an outrageous concept that worked because it was committed to, Mike believes.

“How would they convince someone to make soup drops?” Mike asked.

“Yet, when you take something like that -- that seems almost like a joke -- and you put everything behind it, people love it. I think more of that type of work will become really important, where we've taken something a little silly, but with a deep insight.

“Those ideas were committing to something that seemed like a bad idea initially, and that's going to be really important going forward.

“[It’s] a really smart strategy.”

Dave also admired the “relentlessness” with which some campaigns pursued an idea, especially those which leaned into communities and local nuance.

The best work at Cannes, he argued, was creative that asked, “‘What’s the level up?’ and brands that really leaned into communities.”

One such project for Dave was Skoda’s ‘You Said It’, which asked fans on Reddit to design the new Octavia.

“The easiest thing in the world would have been to [ask], ‘What trim would you like,’” Dave said. “But they went to the one place where it could have gone horribly wrong, and dove in head first, [surrendering] control and having faith in it.”

‘Vaseline Verified’, another community-driven campaign, which celebrated ingenious applications of Vaseline jelly, proved backing an idea doesn’t have to compromise delivery, Dave said.

“For me, it’s really refreshing -- you can launch something just before Christmas, knowing you have an entry deadline of April, and still produce something like that. Sometimes we get a bit doom and gloom [thinking] that would take two years.

“It’s one of those moments of creative nirvana, where some person far cleverer than me [finds] a way to flip something around.”