Kent Boswell’s Cannes Diary #3

Kent Boswell, creative tech and innovation director at The Hallway is representing Australia on the Cannes Digital Craft Lions jury. Boswell, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors, writes exclusively for CB.

6:00am. My iPhone alarm actually got a chance to do its job this morning (I must be over any jet lag).

You can certainly tell we are getting closer to the Festival starting because of the increased frequency of familiar Aussie faces you find yourself bumping into along the Croisette.

After a huge day yesterday to determine our Shortlist, we headed back to the ‘dungeon’ under the Palais to do it all again, but today is all about awarding metal – Bronze, Silver, Gold and the Grand Prix.

With a locked Shortlist of 55 entries (our category had 552 entries in total), it’s time to get cracking as we have another massive day ahead. After getting some time to review the Shortlisted work that made it through we started by awarding all the Bronzes. Once we had all the Bronzes established we then awarded up any work that was Silver winning work. We went through the same process from Silver to Gold. This process ensured nothing that should have been awarded got accidentally left behind.

I have to say it has been such a treat getting to share the room with everyone on my jury as we all listened, shared thoughts/opinions and learnt from each other. I can’t stress enough the best part of the judging process is always the dynamic conversation that naturally flows when discussing the work as a group. Big shout out to Kentaro Kimura, our Jury President who did a fantastic job of leading us throughout the experience.

So, now that we had all the Bronze, Silver and Gold Lions locked away, it was time to award the Grand Prix. Interestingly, as a jury we were all 100% aligned that there were only two possible contenders for the Grand Prix, with both being an incredible showcase of how you can push Digital Craft to the absolute edge. After each jury member got the opportunity to speak their mind to both pieces of work and state their case for what piece of work was stronger than the other, we went to vote and the final decision was unanimous. I can’t wait for the Grand Prix winner to get announced this week.

Seconds after awarding the Grand Prix the sound of Champagne corks popped from someone on the Cannes Lions team and before we knew it we were all clinking glasses to celebrate the moment. With an 8pm dinner booking locked away, we all headed out for a wrap dinner to celebrate what has been such a fantastic experience and for me personally a career highlight moment.

The Digital Craft category will be announced on Tuesday at 7pm.

Congratulations to all the winners!