Today was yet another inspiring day at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Tonnes of seminars, forums and workshops to attend. Loads of excellent creative work to Marvel at. Myriads of people weaving from one end to the other - but most of all lots of learning's that could change the way we do things at home.
The Cannes Festival has grown by leaps and bounds, the entries submitted every year are growing bigger and bigger. This year alone has seen no less than 34,000 pieces of work submitted. I was lucky enough to attend a closed session with Phillip Thomas - CEO, Cannes Lion Festival. The man said that the one major reason entries have increased is ......ready for it?..........CLIENTS!!!!!
Yes, my fellow Kenyan.....Clients are encouraging agencies and creative partners to submit work.
The CEO pointed out that more clients are engaged in celebrating creativity. In fact you can't tell apart work submitted by clients and work submitted by agencies. Take for instance a new awards category launched this year called "Branded Entertainment". The first entry received was from BMW for work on the movie Mission Impossible 4.
Clients have become enlightened and have made a shift from where emphasis was only placed on measuring agency work effectiveness by data, research, return on investment and so on. They want more creativity. They are enablers for agencies to win awards.
Now, I am sure we can go into the age old debate on what choice a client would rather make. Return on Investment or Great Creative? Well Mrs.Client, here's the deal. Its simply a balance of both.
Now you may say that Cannes awards are for more developed markets, but I say that we are not trying hard enough to put our country in the spotlight. Look at the new countries that are scooping gold.....Romania, China, Venezuela, Guatemala, Kuwait, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Columbia. And you tell me that Kenya cannot be on this list. I mean some agency from Tunisia today scooped Gold for an activation campaign. Come on guys!!!!!
Its time for Kenyan clients to start pushing for greater creative output. The world is doing it. How can we be left behind?
Hey, that's just my opinion.
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