"I can’t believe I’ve just watched a man being sodomized by a walrus.” This isn’t a line you often hear in the classy surroundings of Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Hotel, but it was one attendee’s comment after the Cannes 2007 Predictions Reel screening, hosted by Leo Burnett on June 12.
Admittedly, the bestial buggery scene was animated – part of an ad by TBWA Paris for Aides condoms – but it was still pretty disturbing. As were several of the other ads. Car crashes, domestic violence, vomit, blood, urine, creepy-crawlies and suicidal lizards all made appearances at various stages of the evening.
The screening showed the 50 most awarded TV ads from the previous year that had been entered for this year’s Cannes Film Lions, along with three Titanium Lion entries. The predictions reel is a worldwide Leo Burnett tradition stretching back to 1986, although this is only the second year it’s been screened in the Middle East.
Attendees – Leo Burnett employees, clients and media contacts – are invited to select the 20 ads from the reel they feel are most likely to win a Cannes Lion. At the UAE screening, the person who picks the most winners gets a free trip to next year’s festival on the French Riviera.
We were expecting to be dazzled by stellar entries from regions that, unlike ours, aren’t constantly bemoaning a lack of creative talent (there were no Middle Eastern entries on the reel). Instead, we learned that perhaps they should be. If these are the 50 finest TVCs created this year, the advertising world’s in trouble.
That’s not to say there wasn’t some great work on display. Some of the ads ended up being worthy winners at Cannes. But there was also a lot of seriously underwhelming work. While there were several rounds of applause – including a particularly vigorous one for “Billions” by Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London for Lynx deodorant, which may have been less for the quality of the work and more for the many, many bikini-clad women bouncing across the screen – many ads were greeted by silence and sighs, and a couple even managed to get booed.
“Billions” was one of many ads that served to remind us of the limitations imposed on creatives working in the Middle East. Overt sexual references and offbeat humor were used to striking effect in several of the best-received TVCs. “Sea of Skin” for Vaseline, by BBH in New York, for example, was just that: an arresting feast of flesh for the skincare product. BBDO’s ad for G4 TV’s Midnight Spank, meanwhile, threatened that if we didn’t tune in we’d have our kidneys eaten. By a cute, calico-colored guinea pig.
Apparently, the last two spots on the reel are traditionally reserved for the campaigns its compilers feel are most likely to score a Grand Prix. This year, the coveted 50th spot went to “Paint” for Sony Bravia, by Fallon in London. It’s a classy ad, but may suffer from the success of last year’s “Balls” for the same product. (In the end “Paint,” like “Balls,” won a Gold Lion.) But the 49th spot went to “44 Blocks and a Baguette” by Madre, Buenos Aires for Banco Hipotecario. In it, a shoddy apartment block is driven uptown by an old man whose mortgage from the bank has allowed him to become an owner. He parks the building in a more desirable location and the ad ends. There was silence in the screening: not the reception you’d expect for a Grand Prix suspect.
Maybe the audience was just tired. It’s a lot to ask to sit through an hour and a half of consecutive ads. We don’t envy the Cannes jurors, who have to view thousands – with the majority presumably worse than this bunch.
Overall, the most heartening lesson to come out of the UAE screening is that, despite censorship and cultural issues, the best regional advertising really isn’t that far behind the rest of the world after all. There’s a long way to go before it can match the best international work, for sure, but there were plenty of ads on the reel that could have been replaced by, say, the Melody TV ads by Leo Burnett in Cairo, without any noticeable decline in quality.