The event was competitive, Dastur recalled. “You’re given a very open-ended brief, and you have to interpret it. You have to kind of come up with this idea very, very quickly,” he added.
Media.Monks isn’t the only agency sponsoring an opportunity like this. MSQ is a global collective made up of 11 agencies representing about 1200 people. This year, MSQ sent two creatives from the group to Cannes.
Every year, the collective’s creative council nominates three or three creatives from each agency, and a smaller team later selects two winners from the larger nominee pool to send to the festival.
MSQ offers an all-expenses-paid opportunity for those it sends, and provides its creatives with an on-site event coordinator. Matt Williams, global head of marketing at MSQ, took on coordination responsibilities this year. Williams created a detailed agenda to help young creatives navigate the large event, where on-site functions included dinners with MSQ agency CEOs and creative leads.
“If Cannes is all about inspiration, then that’s why we need the next generation to be inspired by it,” said Williams. “We don’t want our senior leaders running off to the hills for big swanky meals, and everyone else left on the Croisette to fend for themselves,” he added.
The Young Lions event
Some agencies hold internal competitions for young creatives, but with the aim of submitting winning work to the Cannes Young Lions competition. This was the case for Julian Amarillo, creative art director at the creative agency Gut and Haroldo Moriera, creative copywriter at Gut.
The duo responded to a fictional Michelob Ultra brief imagined by Gut and sponsoring organizations including Círculo de Creatividad Argentina and FilmSuez. Participating creatives had 48 hours to respond to the brief, at which point an appointed jury judged the projects.
After winning the internal competition, the two secured tickets to Cannes, but because Gut submitted their winning work for judging, they were also up for an award at the festival.
“We haven’t been to Europe and we haven’t been in Cannes, and this is like a dream for us,” Moriera told Adweek before leaving for the event. Moriera and Amarillo represented Argentina, which was top of mind for them during the competition. This year, Young Lions creatives hailed from a record-breaking 70 countries.
At Cannes, the duo did not win the Young Lions award. However, they did win the Grand Prix award for their work on the Stella Artois’ spot, “The Artois Probability.” That spot also won two Gold and two Silver Lions. Amarillo and Moriera’s home office, Gut Buenos Aires, won the Independent Agency of the Year and Agency of the Year awards. It was the first year the Gut team in Argentina had ever won at Cannes.
Gut leadership told the creatives, “This is a big opportunity for you and we believe in you, so we are going to submit you,” Moriera recalled.
Industry orgs can step up, too
Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, brought a team of five early-career creatives to the festival this year. He sought online creators with large social media followings that either work at agencies now or had in the past. Part of their on-site responsibilities included reporting on various Cannes events from a sustainability lens.