Canned in Cannes

My job is all about facilitating awards for other people, but as I stood on the balcony of the press centre at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity announcing the Gold and Grand Prix winners of this year's WARC Awards for Effectiveness I felt like I'd won a prize, so AT LAST it's my turn to give an acceptance speech.

I'd like to thank all 515 of our entrants - I started this job on 20 March and our initial deadline was a week later, so I'm pretty sure some of that early advice was slightly panicked, but we got there.

I must also thank our 80 judges. The jury briefings started in my second week and I was awed by the experience and enthusiasm you brought on board.

A special shout out to our chairs Beatrice Boue, Chiradeep Gupta, VASILEIOS KOURAKIS, Simon Peel, Ross Sergeant and my new BFFs Jennifer Healan and Wendy Walker who joined me to record a WARC podcast about their experiences - subscribe here to make sure you don't miss it.

The WARC Awards judging process is intense - 13 meetings over eight days - to get down to the 113 on our shortlists and then the 50 winners. Phoebe W., Mary Mcilheney and Jonathan Branfield are central to that process and I'm so grateful for how supportive (and patient) they've been.

ALL of those shortlisted entries were available for subscribers on the WARC site by the day they were announced, and that's because our production team are the best in the business - Genevieve Silk, Michele Weydert, Sian Bateman and Christine Karpeles thank you (and all our freelancers) so much - as well as Hana Murgani and Barbara Kuhr for the magic marketing and Amanda Benfell for the perfect PR (and pep talks).

We announced our winners via The Effectiveness Show. You can stream both episodes here. Thanks must go to the brilliant Lona Meza for producing, editing and wringing the best out of the 'talent' she had to work with, but I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to my co-host Amy Rodgers.

We had a three hour window to film at the Palais and our flight out was cancelled whilst we sat at the gate. What followed was an amazing race involving a train, a Eurostar, a very sketchy cab ride through Paris, four sleepless hours in a twin room, a crack of dawn internal shuttle to Nice, a missed pick up, a sweltering Uber (bonus thanks to our eventual driver Manuel, mon héro) and being thrown straight in front of the camera. I couldn't have asked for a more reassuring travel companion, who never lost her sense of humour, even when I thought I'd lost my passport for the second time.

Finally, thanks to Lena Roland, David Tiltman and Paul Coxhill for giving me this opportunity. You can listen to David and me talk about some of the winners on the WARC podcast here. Or watch us sweating on the vodcast version here.

I've loved my time in Cannes - especially sitting in on the judging for the Creative Effectiveness Lions - what a climax to the first three months in a new job! Check out the winning CrEff papers on WARC here and more exclusive Creative Impact-related content from the team here.

News about the future of the WARC Awards is coming soon, but I might just lay down in a darkened room for a couple of days first.

#WAFE2023 #WARCawards #MakeItWARC #CannesLions2023