Inside The Jury Room: "Remarkably High Quality" in First Ever French Immortal Awards Jury
With this year’s Immortal Awards jury sessions well underway, it was the turn of the French jury - which made its debut in the competition this year - to meet on Monday October 9th.
A shortlist of 20 projects, which scored highest in the online round of judging, made it through to the day of discussions.
With some of the market’s leading lights in the creative advertising industry joining the jury, the discussions were lively as the shortlist was whittled down to the first ever French Finalists.
In total, eight projects were given the honour of representing France in the regional European round of judging, which takes place on Friday October 20th.
Those on the first ever French jury were: Samy Benama, chief creative officer at Change Paris, part of the FCB Alliance; Cécile Bitoun, CEO at Dentsu Creative France; Damien Canameras, head of 2D at The Mill Paris; Alexandra Evan, vice president at Publicis Conseil; Tanja Grubner, global innovation, brand and communications director at Essity; Dimitri Guerassimov, CCO/CEO at VMLY&R France; Alexander Kalchev, chief creative officer at DDB Paris; Alasdhair Macgregor, VP, ECD at BETC Paris; Laetitia Neves, head of production at Sid Lee Paris; Valerie Planchez, vice president at Havas Paris; and Ibrahim Seck, creative director at MediaMonks Paris.
With brand, agency, production and post all featuring on the jury, the 11 took a holistic look at a varied body of work - which spanned all traditional media types - to identify the very best French advertising this year.
The sentiment within the room was that it had been a strong year for France, with big wins at global festivals already this year. That transpired in the number of Finalists selected, which was double the number that the Dutch jury took through (four), and dwarfs the Irish trio of Finalists.
On positive trends within the work, Samy noted “the resurgence of humour in the selection. The remarkable work across various categories, both in print and film activation, demonstrates the creativity in the French advertising industry.”
He added: ”What surprised me was the remarkably high quality of the overall body of work, making it incredibly challenging to make a choice between the various campaigns presented.”
“In truth this jury is different to the usual awards because you are voting for work to represent your country,” said Alasdhair. “Like in team sports, here you need strong talent in every position as opposed to five world class attackers and no defence.“
Dimitri identified an interesting trend within his country's best advertising: "The spectacular comeback of the automotive sector in France, led by Renault."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, he was surprised not to see brilliance from the retail industry. "Once upon a time, Carrefour and Intermarché were setting the creative standards, but suddenly all went dark."
The most interesting discussion in the jury room is one Dimitri feels they only "almost" had: Is an idea for good a good idea, just because its for good? "What is the creative standard for an idea that saves the little kids or promotes inclusivity? I have a feeling that right now we measure the creativity of this kind of project mainly by the emotional strings they manage to pull or by the results." Maybe that's a discussion to pass on to the regional round, he suggested.
