Brad Elridge’s Cannes Diary #3

Brad Elridge (left), founder and ECD at Soap Creative is representing Australia on the Cannes Mobile Lions jury. Elridge, along with most of the other Australian and NZ jurors writes exclusively for CB.

Day 5 on the mobile jury.

That’s all folks. The metal has been decided and the shortlists are locked in. It was our president’s birthday today which made our final day together that extra bit special… aawww! Happy Birthday Andy and thanks for your chilled demeanour filling the room with positive vibes over the past week.

There was a considerable amount of measured and passionate debate today. And it really took us all day to churn through it. But, I can honestly say I’ve never been on a jury that shared such a natural connection – and the end result is a list we are all collectively very happy with. Give or take a couple 🙂

Overall in the last five days, there were not as many chatbots as I expected to see. There was not as much (great) VR as I expected to see either (that’s not a bad thing). I also felt there was a lack of playful and creative experiences for mobile, brands especially need to be tapping into games as a channel for advertising on device more. What I did see and admire were ways to use existing platforms to communicate and provide genuine benefit, sometimes using clever hacks.

We’ve finished up with a celebration of work that reflects how diverse marketing has become on mobile devices. Some of the work is hard to distinguish from marketing vs product, as such we’ve been complimentary to work that is starting to reshape and redefine ‘utility’.

The gala party is on tonight. We have our press conference tomorrow followed by the awards presentation in the evening. Now it’s time to enjoy the festival.