How to Win Gold at Cannes Lions?

A couple of days ago, the winners of the Silver Mercury advertising festival were announced. By a twist of fate, I ended up on the jury and can share how to snatch gold from the clutches of the metal distributors.

I saw many great works that, for various reasons, didn't quite make it to the next award level. I'm confident that if the entries had been slightly different, their results would have been higher. Yes, the title was clickbait, but the tips might actually be useful for any advertising festival.

I'll share some observations that might be useful for nominees next year.

1. Submit your project in a category by considering the evaluation criteria for that category.

For example, in the "Effective Humor" category, the criteria weights were distributed as follows: Strategy 20%, Idea 30%, Execution 30%, Result 20%.

I saw festival works that didn't describe the strategic approach or didn't specify the campaign results. As a result, the idea might have been interesting, but it was unclear how to award 40% of the points.

2. Provide precise results if there is such an evaluation criterion.

For example, when we evaluated the effectiveness of humor in a video submitted to the festival, the result couldn't be the overall brand recognition (which launches dozens of campaigns every week). Instead, it should be the recognition of a specific service advertised in the video, or at the very least, the video view rate. Essentially, the metric directly influenced by the video.

There was a funny case where the result in the entry was stated as an increase in followers to a certain level - we checked the account, and the number of followers was significantly lower :D

3. Add a video about your project.

Even when evaluating advertising videos, it was super useful to watch a video explaining the strategy and results of the video campaign. All jury members, I believe, first looked for a short video explanation of the project and only then read the text description of the project.

4. Identify the strong point of your project.

This determines the category. It might seem that the campaign is funny and should definitely be placed in "Effective Humor," but it might turn out that the campaign had a cool audience interaction mechanism and no humor at all.

5. Review the entry with a fresh perspective.

When evaluating the "Best TV/OLV Advertising Video," there was a case where a brand ran a campaign with several videos. On one hand, it seems that all the videos are part of one campaign, solving the same tasks, etc. But damn it - in one video, the campaign message isn't very clear, although in other videos, it's fine. And you know what the mistake was? The project description included only that non-winning video. The jury knew about the other, more successful videos, simply because of their experience.

I hope these tips help someone win a higher-level medal in the coming years. Go for it!

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