Raymond Otene McKay’s Cannes Diary #2

Raymond Otene McKay, chief creative officer at RUN is representing Aotearoa on the Cannes Design Lions jury. McKay, along with most of the other NZ and Australian jurors, writes exclusively for CB.

Day Two:

Well that was intense!

Day two of Design Lions judging starts with a room full of energy. We enter the dragon’s den and then start the task of whittling the work down to our shortlist ready to be awarded metal. The discussion was robust but very respectful as we keep going around and round and round in circles on a few pieces. But as we are no longer able to continue our merry go round of debates and rationale for some pieces we take it to a vote, voila! We manage to award all tiers of Lions metal and reach the Grand Prix.

This last presentation has us all happy with our decision as we open the floor for every voice to really be heard. There are no loud voices in the room throwing their weight around, although there could have been, considering half of them were super heavyweights in the creative world!

As we award our final piece of metal, it feels like a slow-mo out of a movie where we are all giving each other cheesy grins and lamenting on how such-and-such said something funny as we awarded our Grand Prix or bringing up an inside joke the team has been repeating since we met.

All in all, we are all proud of what has been awarded and also what message we are trying to send to the world of advertising and design.

Looking forward to all the events I will be attending this week and my kōrero to the industry on Wednesday.