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But admired brands are as resistant in Australia as they are everywhere else. A little while later, George Patterson Y&R bobbed to the surface, promoting itself as ‘Australia's newest (and oldest) agency'.

17

Shooting stars

‘We work for the directors and they work for us'

I
n Paris, even the world's most glamorous industries amount to the same thing: a warren of offices at the top of an elegantly crumbling apartment building, accessed by a narrow curving staircase or a clanking cage elevator. Partizan, the highly respected film and commercial production company, is no different.

I'm here because I'm a fan of Michel Gondry, the mind-bendingly talented movie director who honed his skills on music videos and commercials produced by Partizan. The company's website calls him ‘the director whose work makes other directors cry,' and points out that he made it into the
Guinness Book of Records
as the director of the most award-winning commercial ever: the 1995 Levi's ‘Drugstore' (the last time I looked you could see it at
www.partizan.com
).

But I won't meet Gondry today. My appointment is with the man who gets the work of people like Gondry onto the screen: Georges Bermann, the executive producer of Partizan. I want to ask him about the delicate relationship between advertising agencies and production houses; or perhaps more to the point, between creative directors and film directors.

From a public relations point of view, directing ads is the polar opposite of directing movies. Everybody knows who directs films – few people know who shoots ads. In most advertising trade magazines the client, the agency and its creative director get star billing when a new ad is launched. The director and the production house appear further down the page – if at all. As for the public, unless curiosity drives them to scour the internet, they are unlikely to learn the identities of the people who direct the extravagant sales pitches they see on their televisions every night.

This is a great shame, because some of the most talented directors of all time have worked in advertising.

Let's name names. Close to the top of my personal list is Tony Kaye, whose no-holds-barred artistry for clients such as Volvo, Guinness and
Sears, among others, has been making the ad break a more exciting place since the 1980s. A controversial, outspoken figure, he continues to intrigue rivals, viewers and the media. If you have to watch only one spot on his production company's website (
www.supplyanddemand.tv
), make it Volvo ‘Twister', made for AMV BBDO in 1995, in which a meteorologist drives his car into the path of a tornado – although that stark description hardly does the ad justice. My bet is that you'll then go ahead and watch all the other spots on Kaye's reel. In 2002, the Clios advertising festival presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to advertising.

And then there's Frank Budgen, co-founder of the London production company Gorgeous Enterprises (its receptionists chirrup, ‘Hello, Gorgeous!' when you call them up) and director of many advertising blockbusters: remember the Sony PlayStation ad featuring the crowds who clamber on top of one another to form a giant, squirming human mountain?

Anybody who has seen his chilling British gangster flick
Sexy Beast
(2000) needs no introduction to Jonathan Glazer, another admired commercials director. He shot the fantastic Guinness ‘Surfer' spot, which first aired in 1999: a black-and-white mini-masterpiece in which the power of crashing waves was symbolized by charging white horses.

Impossible to talk about directors without mentioning Joe Pytka, the prolific American film-maker who has been shooting commercials for more than 30 years for iconic brands such as IBM, McDonald's and Pepsi. According to the Directors' Guild of America, Pytka has directed more than 5,000 spots. With a background in documentary film-making in the sixties and seventies, he brought a gritty new reality to commercials.

More than six feet tall, with a mane of white hair, Pytka is famous for telling it like it is. He first got noticed when, making ads to pay for his documentaries, he shot some spots for Iron City Beer in real taverns, with genuine customers. Recalling his debut for the DGA's magazine, he said: ‘I had done these documentaries that were fairly emotional, but which I had to manipulate to get my point across. I wanted to get to that point in my commercial work, working with real people in real situations. At the time, no one was doing it. Commercials were real theatrical… For about two or three years in Pittsburgh, I was doing these commercials for a local brewery where we'd go somewhere with real people – and they were very successful' (‘Joe Pytka, King of the Commercial World',
DGA Monthly
, September 2002).

On the subject of unconventionality, I'd like to put a word in here for Traktor, the Swedish collective that brought a surreal new twist to advertising with its Jukka Brothers films for MTV – the content of which can only be summarized as ‘Scandinavian redneck morons discover music television' – followed by similarly warped material for the likes of Nike, Levi's and Miller Lite. Evil beavers, mad chickens, savage dogs and seriously bad dancing: find them all at
www.traktor.com
.

Other names, such as Spike Jonze and David Fincher, are cult film-makers who have – unbeknown to the public and even to some fans of their movies – had an indelible impact on the advertising industry.

All of which brings us back to Michel Gondry, Partizan – and Georges Bermann,
ici présent
.

From pop to soda

‘I didn't start out wanting to make ads,' says Bermann, as we sip coffee in his Spartan office. On the wall is a poster for Michel Gondry's film,
The Science of Sleep
, which Partizan also produced. ‘The company was founded in 1986, during the grand époque of the music video. That's what I wanted to do and that's what we were initially known for. Even today, if somebody asks you what you do and you say, “I produce advertising films”, they'll probably ask you to explain what you mean. It's not a metier most people are aware of.'

Partizan's success as a producer of rock videos got it noticed by the advertising community. Controversially, Bermann suggests that advertising is always a step behind other creative professions. ‘Advertising has rarely invented anything. Artistically, it recycles. It's something I've noticed with videos: we'll do something and the idea will find its way into an ad about three years later.' He points out that this is logical, given that television advertising is mass communication. ‘A new form needs to penetrate the consciousness of the public before it can be used effectively in an ad.'

Partizan made its first commercials in the United Kingdom in the mid 1990s, putting its roster of rock video pioneers at the disposal of brands. This turned out to be a wise decision, as the golden age of the video has passed, largely thanks to the internet. Today, Partizan makes more advertisements than it does videos, although the latter remain an important element of its offering.

Partizan, like other large production companies, works with a stable of directors who are contractually bound to it. The production house acts as both agent and manager for its directors, promoting them to the advertising agencies and matching them with suitable film projects. ‘It's a reciprocal engagement: we work for the directors and they work for us,' Bermann explains. ‘It's not just the simple fact that we introduce them to the advertising agencies. We nurture their careers. We give them the opportunity to work in France, Britain and the United States, on commercials, videos and full-length films. And the difference between ourselves and a conventional talent agency is that we take a risk – as a producer of films, we have to deliver a result.'

For the record, Partizan has a stable of around 70 directors and offices in nine cities including Paris, London, Berlin, Beirut, Mumbai, New York and Los Angeles. ‘Michel Gondry is one of the best known to the general public because he's made feature films,' says Bermann, adding with a smile: ‘But don't worry: in the narrower sphere of the industry, we are known to have access to other geniuses too.'

He disagrees, however, with my theory that advertising is a breeding ground for talent. He considers it an applied art. ‘Occasionally it gives directors a chance to experiment and to try different things. More often, it enables them to make a living while they are waiting for a chance to make a feature film. In terms of innovation, I believe music videos are still in advance.'

He accepts that the likes of Alan Parker and Ridley Scott emerged from the advertising industry – but the past is another country. ‘That was before the era of the music video. And it was in England, where the film industry was very small. If you were a director there, making commercials was a way of getting behind the camera. I don't think the directors of the future will come from a purely advertising background, although the industry is certainly capable of producing arresting images.'

How much freedom, anyway, does a director have on an advertising shoot? Some creative directors suggest that the hand-holding is almost total. For example, by using sample clips from other films, an agency can make a rough mock-up of a spot and give it to the director as a template. Not all directors are equal – I'd be very nervous about telling a Joe Pytka or a Tony Kaye to leave their creative impulses at home – but one gets the impression that the creative agency cracks the whip.

Certainly, the production company is not encouraged to interfere. ‘In practice, we have little power. Our role is on the one hand to choose the director, and on the other to respond to the demands that are made by
the agency. The skill, of course, is in suggesting the right director for the project. Afterwards, once the agency is convinced that it has the right person to interpret the script, our role is marginal. We enable the process from a technical point of view, but we keep a professional distance. In fact, it would be seen as extremely bad form if we started giving our opinion. Of course,' he chuckles, ‘if anything goes wrong on the shoot, it's invariably the production company's fault.'

And looming over the ensemble, naturally, is the client. In an interview with
Boards
magazine, Frank Budgen once expressed frustration at the gulf between director and client. ‘I wish the clients were involved more up-front. The way it is now, weeks of pre-pro[duction] can be canned because the client doesn't like something… Clients see us as guns for hire, but the truth is that you do everything to a standard. I'd like the chance to say to the client, “This is the way I work, and this is what I want from this project” ' (‘The year of Frank', 2 December 2002). Nevertheless, Budgen admits that the work, while often frustrating and exhausting, can also be immensely satisfying.

So how do young tyros break into the industry? Encouragingly, Georges Bermann says there is no rule about where a director comes from. They can emerge from the world's finest film schools, or graduate from shooting experimental Super 8 (or more likely digital) films in their backyards. Former design student Michel Gondry, for example, started out making animated videos for a rock band in which he was the drummer. One of the videos was spotted on MTV by Björk.

Bermann concurs that young directors can get exposure making TV commercials, but it rather depends on the agency. He quietly despairs at the advertising industry's lack of willingness to take risks. ‘In the United States, it's practically a zero risk environment,' he says. ‘They accept that they're not making ads to explore the possibilities of film, but to sell products. That's why a large percentage of their advertising is based on humour, which is highly effective. But there's not a great deal of room for manoeuvre in the comedy register. The United Kingdom is a more audacious market. Agencies are keen to engage young directors because they bring with them the latest trends. British agencies are interested in the wider culture, so their advertising reflects that.'

He believes those who aspire to making great ads should embrace influences from art, literature, theatre, dance – but not the work of other directors. ‘The most creative advertising is inspired by everything apart from advertising. Whether creativity is necessary when your main aim is to sell things is another debate.'

18

Controversy in Cannes

‘It's not just about fun in the sun'

N
ights in Cannes always end in the gutter. That's to say in the Gutter Bar, a hole-in-the-wall joint opposite the delectably euro-trashy Martinez Hotel. The drill is this: you wallow in the Martinez until the bartender turns you out, and then you sashay across the road to the Gutter. The bar's real name is 72 Croisette, but nobody ever calls it that. Its Anglo-Saxon sobriquet is descriptive rather than metaphorical: until the late hours of the morning, drinks are served through a side hatch, so you knock back your poison al fresco, standing in the street. For a journalist covering the festival the place is a key axis: hang around long enough and you're guaranteed to either rub up against an advertising industry luminary, or hear some useful gossip about one.

Rather like the film festival – a less glamorous and more restrained affair – the annual advertising industry gathering at Cannes is officially about handing out awards, attending seminars and soaking up the best films from around the world, but some would say it's
actually
about networking, necking, swigging champagne, doing recreational drugs and falling asleep on the beach. One of the finest things about socializing with advertising people is that they do it so well.

The event takes place in mid-June and is properly called The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: the significance of the ‘lions' will become clear in a moment. The ‘Creativity' tag was added in 2011, replacing the word ‘Advertising' – either to reflect the changing nature of the business or to open the way for even more entries from a wider selection of categories, depending on your level of cynicism.

It attracts up to 11,000 delegates a year. In competition are over 30,000 pieces of communication: films, press, outdoor, radio, interactive, direct
marketing and so on. Each discipline has a team of international jurors. The hub of the occasion is the Palais des Festivals, a giant waterfront building that looks like a clump of ice-cubes swamped in concrete. Here you can pick up your accreditation, leaf through magazines, drink coffee, check out exhibitors' stands and attend seminars in darkened theatres. If you're committed to your work, you can watch reels of commercials in neighbouring darkened theatres.

Alternatively, you can spend your time schmoozing with your fellow advertising types over breakfast, coffee, lunch, tea, cocktails and dinner. And after dinner, there's always an agency party or three to attend at the beach clubs along La Croisette. Followed by drinks at the Martinez, followed by more drinks at the Gutter Bar – followed by oblivion.

There are a number of prize-giving ceremonies throughout the week, but the hottest ticket is still the film awards bash on the last night. The winning ads are awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions. The best of the Gold Lions is awarded the Grand Prix. It has become a tradition that if the audience disagrees with one of the jury's decisions, it whistles discordantly during the screening of the winning ad. This merely proves that many advertising people are very young; and that some of them are far from polite. When the ceremony is over there is a closing party on the beach.

Cannes is not the only awards ceremony on the advertising calendar – far from it. Others include the D&AD Awards, the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Awards, the Clio Awards, the Cresta Awards, Eurobest, the Epica Awards, The London International Advertising Awards, the New York Festivals and The One Show. Then there are numerous regional and local events. At the end of it all an influential publication called
The Gunn Report
(compiled by former Leo Burnett creative chief Donald Gunn) tots up all the major awards the leading agencies have won during the year and provides a ranking. Advertising agencies love receiving awards because these shiny hunks of metal and glass are tangible proof of their most ephemeral asset – creativity.

There's something special about Cannes. It's big, glossy and a bit over the top. And it can afford to be – although the organizers decline to provide an official figure, it is said to make a profit of €10 million a year on an income of €20 million. This is hardly surprising with entry fees of between €430 and €1,275 for each piece of work (depending on the category) and an individual delegate fee of €2,550. The event is currently
run by the British publisher and events organizer EMAP, which acquired it in 2004 for a reported £52 million.

But to uncover the history of the Cannes Lions, we must visit an elegant art-filled apartment in the sedate 16th arrondissement of Paris, and take tea with the man who transformed the festival.

The man behind Cannes

Roger Hatchuel was the figurehead of Cannes for almost 20 years. EMAP bought the event from an offshore trust, but it was Hatchuel's name that appeared in headlines when the deal was announced. As he recounts, the week-long festival began as a subdued occasion run by an intimate circle of cinema advertising contractors. And every other year, it took place in Venice.

‘The story started in 1953,' explains Hatchuel, who is trim, dapper and polite, with a hint of steely determination that has no doubt served him well. ‘At that time the only audiovisual medium available to advertisers outside the United States was cinema – commercial TV had not yet begun in Europe. Investment in cinema advertising was nonetheless very low, which is why you had this small group of independent contractors who all knew one another. They banded together to form an industry association.'

In order to promote themselves, the contractors decided to hold an annual festival to which they would invite potential clients. And as they were closely linked to the cinema industry, they decided to stage the event in the two European cities associated with film festivals: Cannes and Venice. The Venice link explains the adoption of the lion as the form and name of the award. (A winged lion is the symbol of the city's patron saint, St Mark.) The first winner was apparently an Italian spot for Chlorodont toothpaste.

The Screen Advertising World Association was based in London, largely owing to the prominence of the contractor Pearl & Dean. Hatchuel, who had previously been head of advertising at Procter & Gamble France, came across it when he was hired to run the French cinema advertising contractor Mediavision. Reluctantly, he allowed his boss – Mediavision co-founder Jean Mineur – to talk him into becoming chairman of the association. ‘I felt it would be terrible for my personal image,
because as far as I was concerned the association was run very unprofessionally by a bunch of old guys. But I respected Monsieur Mineur so I went along with him. This was in 1985. A year later, I told them, “Look, I'm not going to stay involved in this festival if it's run in an unprofessional way as a non-profit organization. We need investment, marketing and manpower so we can turn it into a real business.” Bear in mind that, until the early eighties, they had refused to accept entries that had been shown only on television, because they saw themselves as a cinema advertising organization.'

By then Venice had been dropped as a location owing to the frequent transport strikes and lack of affordable, central accommodation for delegates. From 1987, Hatchuel took a financial stake in the Cannes festival and began to develop its activities. ‘I wanted to turn it into the Olympics of advertising as far as awards were concerned, the Davos in terms of networking and seminars, and the Harvard in terms of opportunities to learn.'

Progress was slow: Cannes did not accept print entries until 1992. (Internet, media strategy, direct marketing and radio categories have been added over the years.) Hatchuel tried to steer the image of the festival away from sun, sea and sex towards something more serious. In 1991 he established a slogan: ‘Less beach, more work.' This later became: ‘No beach, all work.' ‘The strategy was not 100 per cent successful,' he says, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘but I was able to convince people that the festival had genuine value – that it was not just about having fun in the sun.'

For Hatchuel, at least, the festival was often a source of stress. There were accusations of underhand voting tactics and ‘ghost' ads – those that had been created purely for the festival and never run in reality – and the clash of egos among the highly strung creatives on the jury could be spectacular. Their decisions were never less than controversial. Hatchuel still shudders at the memory of 1995, when a jury chaired by the combative Frank Lowe considered that none of the work merited a Grand Prix, to the extremely vocal displeasure of the awards night audience.

In 2004, when it became clear that his son Romain did not want to take over the running of the festival, Hatchuel decided it was time to bow out at the age of 71. And so EMAP stepped in. Delegates who returned to the festival under its new ownership noticed little difference – a few more seminars, perhaps, a few bigger names in the lecture halls, an earnest air of professionalism. But the Gutter Bar appeared entirely unchanged.

Counting the cost

Agencies spend thousands of dollars entering work for Cannes and then going along to see how it does. An article in
Creative Review
reported that in 2001, one agency spent US $500,000 entering awards (‘What's Cannes worth?', 1 July 2003). Occasionally, agency people suggest that the Effie Awards – a rival prize-giving event that judges campaigns on sales effectiveness rather than on creativity – is more relevant to the industry. But despite this occasional grouching, most advertising heavyweights defend creative awards.

‘Ideally you want to be top of the creative awards and top of the effectiveness awards,' says WPP supremo Sir Martin Sorrell. ‘But I certainly don't think the two are mutually exclusive.'

Phil Dusenberry, the BBDO creative legend who drove home the mantra ‘the work, the work, the work' during his career at the agency, said: ‘Creative awards are your report card – they enable you to keep track of how you're doing. But you can't let them become your goal. The best reward is making the cash registers ring.'

But these days, big clients such as Procter & Gamble go to Cannes too. ‘Award shows are an important part of the advertising industry culture,' a P&G spokeswoman told
Advertising Age
. ‘We are delighted to see our agency partners recognized for the work they do in industry forums.' Marlena Peleo-Lazar, vice president and chief creative officer for McDonald's USA, added, ‘Between the movies and luncheons that people think happen at Cannes, there is an ongoing dialogue about work… This really reminds you of the brilliance that does happen in the business' (‘Are advertising creative awards really worth the cost?', 15 June 2006).

Erik Vervroegen, the multi-award-winning international creative director at Publicis, believes that attitudes to the festival are changing. ‘In a world where millions of pieces of communication are screaming for attention, clients realize that creativity is the only thing that makes a difference. When you consider the amount of work the judges have to look at, they are in an even more extreme position than the public, because they are obliged to make a decision based on what they see. Any piece of creative work that emerges from the pile is obviously effective.'

He adds that an agency that wins awards has no problem attracting bright young creative talent. ‘If you're not winning, you're considered insipid.'

Kevin Roberts, worldwide chief of Saatchi & Saatchi, would agree. ‘The people who complain about Cannes are the people who never win,' he says. ‘Creative people generally need to be liked and recognized. In my view awards have nothing to do with clients or new business – they're about inspiring your creative talent. At Saatchi, we're only as good as our creative talent. So when Saatchi wins a lot of awards, guess what happens? Our creative people want to stay, and other creative people want to come and join us. We're in the ideas business, ideas come from creative people, and creative people need to be motivated by recognition. Simple.'

Cilla Snowball, the boss of much-awarded London agency AMV BBDO, says, ‘It's important for us to feel as though we're punching above our weight in creative terms. But how do you measure creativity? Cannes is one of the ways of doing that… Awards are a measurement, a beacon, a stimulus, they give people a sense of achievement, and everybody wants to win one.'

And there's no doubt that Cannes is incredibly influential. The creative reputation of not just an agency, but also an entire country can be boosted by a good run at Cannes. Such was the case in the mid-1990s, when Stockholm agency Paradiset DDB won a string of awards for its off-the-wall advertising for jeans brand Diesel, culminating in its client being named Advertiser of the Year in 1998. For a while, it seemed as though Sweden was the new hotbed of creativity. The spotlight has since moved on – although the Swedes still make pretty sharp advertising. Spain, Brazil and Thailand have all benefited from this halo effect at one stage or another.

So how do you win an award at Cannes? One of the criticisms levelled at the festival is that specific cultural references are unlikely to make it past the international juries: what may seem like a terrific joke in your domestic market will probably leave the rest of the world cold. Wordplay in any language other than English is clearly out. You need a big, crowd-pleasing visual idea that expresses what advertising people invariably call ‘a universal truth'.

Richard Bullock of production company Hungry Man advises: ‘Cannes is a good way of seeing new work and measuring yourself against your peers, but there's no shortcut to winning. On a day-to-day basis, you focus on solving the problem you've been given. If you try and win an award, the chances are you won't.'