Award Show Bedlam! Cannes Lions, Dubai Lynx, One Show

The 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is still half a year away, but it’s never too early to hear news about the biggest advertising show on the planet. The Lions have recently announced three new jury presidents, to go alongside Mark Tutssel’s earlier appointment to the position of Film & Press President.

• Paul Lavoie, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of TAXI (and big ihaveanidea fan) will be chairing the Radio jury

• Tay Guan Hin, Regional Executive Creative Director, JWT Asia (who we had the pleasure of interviewing for the Creatives section recently — that interview will be online very, very soon) is the prez of the Outdoor jury

• Laura Desmond, Global Chief Executive Officer, Starcom MediaVest Group (who has no direct ihaveanidea connection, but we’re sure she’s a great person) will serve as Media president.

____________________________

And because the folks who run the Cannes Lions like to stay busy, they’ve also made some announcements regarding Dubai Lynx 2010, another blockbuster show they take care of. Call for Entries for the biggest Middle East/Africa award show has been launched for TV/Cinema, Outdoor, Print, Radio, Interactive, Direct & Sales Promotion, Media, Integrated and the new Craft category. The deadline for all categories is Thursday, February 10th, 2010.

The Festival itself will take place in Dubai (naturally) from March 14th–17th 2010 at the Palladium in Dubai Media City. This event is slated to include 16 seminars and four workshops, with guest speakers such as Chuck Porter , Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky fame and Prasoon Joshi Executive Chairman and Regional ECD Asia Pacific of McCann Erickson India.

Delegate passes are now on sale. I know what you’re thinking: this is Dubai, do the passes cost $3.7 million each, are they carved out of diamond and do they come wrapped in authentic pieces of the Shroud of Turin? Actually no, delegate passes are an astoundingly low price of US$400, and only $US325 if you get them before February 1st, 2010. Not too bad at all for a world class festival.

____________________________

Speaking of award show surprises, the One Show Interactive has made a significant change to their structure, switching from the usual annual award setup to a quarterly one. “The digital world moves too fast for a once a year deadline,” said Kevin Swanepoel, president of The One Club in his press release voice.  “Too often, work created early in the year is overshadowed by the ‘newest and latest’ that comes out closer to a big traditional deadline. The One Show Interactive’s new quarterly deadlines give all work equal attention no matter when it was released, allowing groundbreaking ideas to be recognized in near real time.”

The new quarterly entry deadlines are March 31st, June 30th, September 30th, and December 31st. But don’t panic; this doesn’t mean that you’ll have to buy four printed “annuals” a year for your agency bookshelf or coffee table. The finalists in each quarter are brought back again at year’s end to compete for Pencils and make it into the prime pages of the still-once-a-year Interactive annual.