Hasta La Creative!

Rightly or wrongly, allegations of block voting have always dogged Cannes juries. “In the past it was around country pride, so there was a lot of talk many years ago around cartels and blocks of countries voting for their own work,” Mr. Thomas said. “Now, as the Network of the Year and the Holding Company of the Year awards become very important, the focus has shifted to voting in these areas. This is the question we’re trying to address with this algorithm.”

The most recent serious scandal was in 2012, when WPP and Omnicom Group traded accusations of block voting by those holding companies’ agencies on the media jury, where each group had six judges. Without naming names, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell was quoted in the press saying some judges were apparently pressured to vote for certain entries. An Omnicom agency exec retaliated by saying that WPP agencies were “briefed to kill” Omnicom agencies’ entries. After the festival, senior media agency leaders conferred with the organizers, and the media jury was restructured the following year.

Using the algorithm across all the juries, the data can be configured to show how a judge’s voting patterns relate to their own network, to other networks, to holding companies and to particular countries. Presented as a traffic light system — with red indicating cause for concern — it can also be calibrated to show by what percentage a judge has been voting outside of the norm.

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