Colleen DeCourcy, Cyber jury president
 Tuesday, June 17, 2008 - The festival is just starting to move into fever-pitch mode. The Cyber jury has completed its shortlist, and the Gutter Bar is spilling out into the street for the first time during Lions '08. Proclamations are being made everywhere about what this year will hold.
Spent a lot of Monday listening to people’s opinions about what is going on with “agencies and digital.” Honestly, no one thinks “we’ve arrived,” but everyone wants to know what the problem is. I’m tired of talking. I have a few thoughts, and I’ll put them here.
How do we push advertising across the digital divide?
1. Start with how people use technology instead of all this navel gazing about how advertising uses technology.
2. Next, don’t get confused by what technology can do that doesn’t apply to advertising.
3. Focus! And prepare your agencies to run two tracks of output: the campaign track and the brand/product extension track. When you have a healthy internal culture that could make Lowe’s Stella Artois work and Nike+, then you’re got your spectrum covered for now.
4. Rebirth your PR function to support customer service and social-media activities in partnership with your clients and their brands.
Had dinner with our gracious hosts from USA
Today and shared stories of submission confusion with members of our
new Design jury. They haven’t received any digital design work. I’m
sad. Had a great time. Finally met Fernanda Romano at the Carlton. She
is full of opinions and passion even in the wee hours of the morning …
thank god. I suspect Brian Morrissey will be wishing he avoided the
Gutter Bar last night.
Sunday, June 15, 2008 - I just woke up at 9 p.m. in an
absolute panic thinking it was 9 a.m., that I’d missed my 7:45 a.m.
interview and was an hour late for the jury start time on our final day
of shortlist voting. Having stayed at the Noga Hilton once before, and
experienced the same kind of disturbed sleep AND confirmed my state
with the other jurors, I’m convinced it’s haunted by the ghost of some
strange Vegas/Eurotrash drifter who walks the halls messing with our
well-being. It’s a strange, dark, chrome-filled world here. Feels like
an abandoned technology—maybe a Beta tape.
I can hear the noise
from the China party on Carlton Beach. Much like the few online ads
I’ve seen from the same place; I’m not sure what they’re doing, but it
seems industrious.
The Cyber jury has finished its third day. It’s
been an uphill climb. We have a collection of some of the most
experienced minds in the business in the Palais, and yet it seems that
they are all equally baffled as to how to judge and rank the entries.
Is it about the platform? The idea? The perfect merger of both? What
about the video entries? There is a category for viral video, and the
Film jury will see online films but only those under three minutes. How
does this relate to what we’re seeing in online long-format content
from Honeyshed and the presentation many of us received from Ashton
Kutcher's company last week in New York? Who’s judging that? Surely as
TV and online merge we’ll need to address this soon. Alas, the future
is not ours to judge, just the past.
Everyone has been very verbal so far. I wonder if that interferes
with the first, democratic, solo voting stage that culls the list. I’m
happy we’re almost at the official discussion stage so that my jury can
release some of their obvious desire to discuss the work as a group.
There is much discussion around the judging of the work in pieces or
objects as opposed to the ecosystems that Cyber is so perfect for.
There is also a marked difference in the amount of talk in the press
and on blogs about “social media” programs like Twitter, online
communities and online media and the number of submissions of same. The
criterion to judge the work based on the festival’s positioning as a
“creative festival” further confuses the issue. What constitutes
creativity in online? It’s such a blend of smart media, direct, film,
design and promotional stunt that we’ve spent a considerable amount of
time talking about the ubiquity of technology and the possible demise
of the category as it touches all our disciplines. One thing is
obviously true: As technology has changed the way we view the world,
the world has changed.
—Colleen DeCourcy is chief digital officer at TBWA Worldwide and the Cyber jury president.
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