Matty Burton, group chief creative officer at DDB Group Aotearoa is representing New Zealand on the Cannes Brand Experience & Activation jury. Burton, along with most of the other New Zealand and Australian jurors, writes exclusively for CB.
Day 3. Children.
There is a certain predictability to what we do. I’m sensing a bunch of different formulas, or playbooks, or, the only way I can say it politely is logic.
There is a lot of logic in our industry. It’s in the work. It’s fucking everywhere.
Hi, meet my friend, he’s really, really logical. You’re going to have a fucking ball together. You’d run like mad right. Yet we think that’s the way to start a conversation. This is why our industry is fucked. This is why there is so much shit in the world that we put into it. This is what we have to fight against. We’re fighting logic.
An interesting thing happened today, or more like in the middle of the night, when we were talking about the Grand Prix. We were down to four on a shortlist and we were just talking about them all.
We talked a lot. And there was one that we spent the most time talking about. It divided the room. A funny thing was happening. We would watch the case film and we’d all be laughing our heads off. Then we would start talking about it and we became adults. We’d watch it again and laugh and then talk about it, discussing our considered points of view. We forgot to be human. Just for a little bit. But then we remembered who we are. What actually matters. And it’s not fucking logic. We have more fun when we’re children.
They’re a funny thing new ideas. When they come into the world, if they are any good, they are a little bit scary. They are a breath of fresh air. But that means they’re not quite like anything else. It means that they are hard to grab hold of. They are too fucking easy to kill. With logic.
Let’s leave the adulting part to the sea of spit that parades the festival shoreline late at night.
I’m not entirely sure what these red faced, spit producing twats are aspiring to be but they look like the type of people you could buy a child from. Just when I’m starting to feel a certain type of vulgar in my mouth by looking at them, a waiter holding fucking sparklers delivers another bottle of champagne to them. This is not the pinnacle. It’s not the top of our industry. They just think it is.
Stay childish out there.
