Cannes Lions 2017 Jury Presidents: Mike Rogers, Health & Wellness

Health & Wellness is a curious category in Cannes due to the range of work which is entered. Other categories are grouped around the medium for which the work was made, Health & Wellness is instead based around the sector that the work was made for. That leads to a list of entries that can differ hugely in style and execution. LBB’s Addison Capper caught up with Mike Rogers, a creative partner at Serviceplan Health & Life and 2017 Health & Wellness jury president, to find out how he and his jury will be dealing with the issues that this brings up. 

LBB> How are you preparing yourself for your stint in the jury room this year? 

MR> Firstly by diving deep into the prejudging and getting to know the work. Secondly by doing something completely different - racing cars in England.

LBB> What are you hoping to see from the entries this year? How has the pre-judging been going so far?

MR> I'm looking for groundbreaking work over a wide range of categories and not just in the obvious areas like, for example, social. Pre-judging was intense and exciting. Searching for the gems that you just know are going to be intensively debated. 

LBB> What words of advice will you be giving to your jury?

MR> As always - judge with your heart.

LBB> Health & Wellness is an interesting category because it’s not related to a certain form of advertising (like film, direct, digital, etc.), it looks instead at a whole product category of brands instead. This means that you’ll likely be judging work that will widely range in styles and execution. What kind of challenges does that add to your job and how will you and your jury overcome them? 

MR> The Health & Wellness category is special in that it covers the whole range of disciplines for which in Cannes Lions there are individual categories. This is very challenging and requires intense concentration to ensure you judge the work in the right context. It also makes it very, very interesting.

LBB> The transcendent ‘big’ ideas are relatively easy enough to spot, but some work is smart in a more nuanced way, for example work that plays on the subtleties of a particular culture (the challenges of writing copy in Chinese might be different to writing in English or French, for example). When you’re leading a jury, how do you give space to these ideas in the jury room?

MR> The jury is very global with representatives from many countries. They are also great people with a very global attitude, so this helps enormously in such discussions.

LBB> Obviously you’re going to spend a lot of Cannes 2017 locked inside for jury deliberations… but is there any event or talk that you’re hoping to catch while you’re there?

MR> At the moment I am especially looking forward to dinner with my jury, getting to know them better and discussion about the exciting next few days.

LBB> Outside of the jury room, what do you think will be the big talking point of Cannes 2017?

MR> It’s still very early days here at the moment but the main subject for Lions Health is which work is going to receive a Grand Prix.