One of my favourite parts of physically attending the event, is to walk through the lower conference, the Palais, where there’s a display of every shortlisted entry as a single idea printed on a board.It’s a marvel to walk these corridors, the space becomes a true showcase of the breadth and depth of creative thinking from our global peers.

You get a true sense of the scale of our industry, what other agencies are producing and how our country’s work stacks up against the competition. It’s no wonder South African agencies place such a huge significance on seeing their work cut through at this awards festival. I know from personal experience that it’s a truly special moment for any creative or client to break through, especially when you consider the sheer volume and depth of work entered here.

So it’s no surprise that whilst judging Creative Strategy this year, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing so much great work. Not just good work, but grrrreat work from throughout the world, including South Africa. It’s been amazing to see the innovative thinking and key insights that have shaped the transformative work in this category. Cannes certainly never disappoints to deliver on the inspirational scale!

While I hope to see many of our country’s entries convert into wins this year, I also hope that we don’t judge the overall standard of South African creativity purely on this outcome. Last year, we were unfortunate not to convert as many entries as usual, which led to many people criticising the industry for a lack or loss of creativity. I strongly oppose this view, and believe that our standards are consistently world class. It’s worth noting that as a country, we tend to enter less work than others due to our weaker currency (yes, it’s extremely expensive to enter Cannes), but we’ve always entered an interesting and strong mix of work. Looking at this years entries, I feel the same way.

Cannes is a great barometer of creativity, but it’s just one of the many to consider. I believe that our primary and most important measure of success is whether the work really worked and cut through to people in our own country. In parallel to measuring local resonance and impact, our industry obviously needs to also know how its stacking up against peers, which is where local awards such as Loeries and Effies play a key role. In my view, these are the most important barometers of our industry’s creative health and capabilities. Only then should we overlay success at global shows such as Cannes and other worldwide platforms.

Whatever happens this year, I think our industry could benefit from relooking how and where it measures its own standards. From my point of view, our standards are very high. We’ve had some of the most positive feedback from the public on our own agencies’ work this year, and it’s demonstrated in the feet we’ve driven into physical stores, the fingers we’ve driven to online sales, the huge volume of shares of the content we’ve produced, and the positive comments consumers have posted online. Yes, arguably our industry still needs to build more depth and volume of thinking across the industry, but our best work is undeniably world class and is often setting global standards.

In closing, I truly hope we all see the South African flag flying high this year in the south of France, but let’s not lose perspective that Cannes is only one place to measure our success. In the meantime let’s promote ourselves, our industry, our work and our people proudly and loudly!



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