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The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival was established 53 years ago and is the largest event of its kind in the world. Entries are received for thousands of advertising campaigns from all around the globe, all of which are hoping to pick up a prestigious Cannes Lion award from the judges. Awards are made across a range of nine different categories including film, press, outdoor, radio, direct marketing and cyber, among others. The event takes place over the course of a week and includes both the judging of entries as well as a programme of seminars and workshops. Running an event of this scale is like a military operation. In order to ensure the event runs like clockwork Cannes Lions has invested in a number of different technology-based solutions to manage everything from delegate registration to the voting system used by the judges. Technology also provides Cannes Lions with a competitive edge, helping it to lead the way and firmly maintain its position as the most prestigious advertising event in the world. In order to ensure that it keeps this position, Cannes Lions has formed a close partnership with Codegate, a highly experienced software and solution provider. Codegate initially helped Cannes Lions develop an electronic voting system for the film judging, to replace a paper based system that required votes to be entered onto a form by the judges. These were then manually entered into the bespoke back end system which was both time consuming and prone to error. Codegate developed a solution using HP iPAQ PDAs that captured the votes directly. The results were then uploaded to the back end system at the end of each day eliminating the need for a large number of temporary staff employed to manually enter the votes into the system. After initial trials on the film entries, the technology was deemed so successful that similar voting systems were developed for the other entry categories, now used by a total of 176 judges. Use of the PDAs has developed a step further with the introduction of audio files for radio ads provided on memory cards for the radio jury. Now the judges can listen to the radio files at their leisure through the headset connected to the device. As the PDAs are wireless the judges have the freedom to move around whilst listening and they can pause and replay the ads as desired. For integrated, media, direct marketing and sales promotion sections, the system has been developed further, following observations made by the Codegate team whilst onsite at the event. The team noticed that the juries had to review a huge amount of support material for each campaign. This could include radio and television advertisements, web banners, direct mail pieces and more, across a huge number of different media formats. The Cannes Lions support team had to play and display the items to the juries using a combination of devices depending on the format of the material supplied. This could include displaying images on the presentation screen, playing sound clips on CD, DVD or cassette and showing video or animation files online, on tape or DVD. The myriad of media and mediums made the smooth organisation and presentation of each entry slow and clumsy. The judges wouldn’t know how many items had been submitted for each entry and would have to sit through all the items, even if the entrants had submitted five variations of the same radio ad. In order to improve the organisation and efficiency of this category, Codegate recommended a move to a completely digital solution. Now, all the material for each campaign is loaded onto a PC for display to the judges as a presentation called Media Launcher. The jury can see the number of items available for each campaign and the types of file at a glance. They can decide how many and which items to review, making the whole process run much more smoothly and reducing the overall time and support needed. Additionally, in order for the organisers to track the day’s progress there is a status bar on the PC screen. The judges have also found this very useful as it also helps them to see where they are in proceedings. Codegate has also developed a system to help Cannes Lions manage their delegates more effectively. At registration, delegates have their details verified and their picture is taken using a webcam. They are given a colour coded badge to wear which includes a personal barcode and their photo. The colour denotes which days of the event they can attend and the barcode relates to the person’s registration details. A further solution developed by Codegate allows the Cannes Lions team to gather delegate data by scanning the badge on their barcode at the entrance to certain seminars and workshops for post Festival analysis. Commenting on Codegate, Carolyn Lowery, Festival Director at Cannes Lions says “I initially selected Codegate because of their open and honest approach. They quickly proved to be flexible, adaptable and proactive. They are onsite throughout our events, supporting our solutions, observing our processes and occasionally developing new solutions on the fly. We also value their event debrief as they always have new ideas for how we can improve our processes, many of which we implement. “Codegate is also working on a number of other developments for us, not just for Cannes Lions, but also for our European awards competition, Eurobest Awards and our Middle East and North Africa awards, the Dubai Lynx. All these solutions help to make our events run even smoother and ensure that we maintain our position as organisers of the most prestigious advertising events in the world. We see Codegate as a key member of the Cannes Lions team.” Lowery concludes.     |
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