Marcus Rebeschini on judging the CLIO Awards 2011

 

10,000 kms after leaving Singapore, I arrived in the middle of nowhere and I seriously mean nowhere!

 

Picture those Mexico borders where the Mexicans run through the desert sands to get into Los Angeles–well that was pretty much where I was. Personally I think CLIOs decided upon this location so no one would be tempted to have big nights out and not give the work the 100% attention it deserves. Smart move, CLIOs.

 

For me, the judging was weird.  It was conducted in three parts, which meant that a lot of the work I never even got to see until the process reached the finalist/metal stage.  I suspect some really nice work was killed without me even seeing it, let alone getting to judge it–a pity as I saw some awesome ideas, but for some strange reason they never saw the light of day again. 

 

Most of the work was pretty much what we’ve all seen before.  I also felt that a lot of the thinking that was scoring awards was small thinking and personally a lot of the stuff that got awarded I would never have awarded it if it had just been me making the decision. But then I guess that’s why there are lots of judges and not just me, otherwise it would have been a rather thin list of winners.

 

I think most shows are going through weird stages at the moment, some of it in a good way, with categories being changed or added.  One of the categories I was judging was Innovative Media. We started awarding trophies and I called out, "Whoa whoooa whooooaa….chotto matte” (Japanese for ‘wait a minute’).  The reason being, I felt we were awarding work that was just Outdoor done in a slightly clever way. So we argued (yes, argued) whether this could truly be judged as innovative. For me, true innovation is when an idea is a first, it’s never been done before.  An idea where you won’t hear anyone say "I’ve seen that before, reminds me of something."; more likely you’d say "That’s awesome. Wow."

 

And examples of true innovation were exactly what I was looking for.  

 

I questioned a lot of the work. Did it really hit the sweet spot with consumers?  For example, a Cannes Gold winner for South Africa’s “A campaign designed to stop sales”.  An amazing outdoor idea to communicate the number of children going missing every year in the country, but firstly the people walking behind the fake ‘wall’ wouldn’t experience the idea and the people on the other side of the road looking at the idea wouldn’t be able to read the sign explaining the idea as it’s so damned small.  Cannes Gold Lion?  For me personally? No. 

 

Canon Photochains is another example. Ok I could be wrong, but if it tells me to go take a photo based on an element of the original photo, say, something orange, I’m inspired to go off and shoot that.  So far so good, but what if someone else in the meantime also shoots something orange and & takes my spot, then what? I have to start my own chain. And you can’t even do that, so the whole ‘chain’ concept, although clever, doesn’t actually work.  Bit of a flaw in that idea. Cannes Grand Prix? Again, I don’t think so. 

 

Why did I bring these examples up? Because I think everyone these days is getting sucked into case study videos and forgetting what the big idea was and crucially how it would work in real life. And that’s why these didn’t win so big at CLIOs.

 

I did seem to see a lot of ‘Rocky’ part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ideas happening. Meaning, same idea, done again. Sure, still brilliant but I feel not as fresh as the first time I saw it. I like that they still rocked up with some clever thinking such as Gatorade Replay part 2 reaching consumers this time and Andes Beer part 2 which wasn’t as nice as the first one and the video’s a little shonky, not giving the idea the justice it deserves, but hats off for being so damn innovative.

 

Just off the top of my head, a few I liked. Mini Getaway, Save as WWF, Guide Dogs blind scent and The Film room by Nike.

 

Thanks for reading.