A lot of people don’t realise that Bon Iver’s ‘AWARDS SEASON’ is about trying to win a Cannes Lion. It’s about that feeling we’ve all felt: your campaign has three shortlists in Direct, and your hopes are high as you go to bed at around 10pm Sydney time.
You wake up at 3am and refresh the Cannes site 28 times. There are no results visible. You blame the crappy mobile UX.
Your restlessness is clearly annoying your girlfriend at the time. Elisha is broadly supportive of your professional endeavours. There was, however, a clear moment you saw her eyes glaze over - it was shortly after you explained that, at an advertising award show, each category has a theoretically unlimited number of nominees. And winners. That furrowed her brow and it has yet to unfurrow. Whatevs. She’s never going to get it. As someone who works in pharma, her work life is just a slog of curing disease after disease and making people’s lives better. She’ll never Crip-walk through the Cat-5 champagne hurricane that you’re about to.
You drift back into a light sleep, waking at 5:27 with hopes of an ALL-CAPS text from your CCO. Nothing yet. Too busy celebrating at the Croissant or the Quassette or whatever it’s called?
It being a Friday, your mind skips ahead to the prospect of a triumphant pub lunch. Chicken parmi? Nah, the scotch fillet. Ball out, playa - you’ve probably got a pay rise on the way. Speaking of on its way, you might even put in a call to your dealer, Ash - aka DoorAsh. His stuff isn’t great but it does a decent impression of blow and delivery is prompt.
Over coffee you discover that Campaign Brief has released the results in a damn spreadsheet - Excel, at a time like this?! It’s undignified. But you get in there and you command-F your campaign name.
Through the chilly June dawn, the Microsoft pop-up need only whisper: no results.
Your fingers bound over your MacBook like bloodhounds - desperately sniffing out some kind of mistake.
But the whisper only turns into a howl: NO RESULTS DAWSO YOU WORTHLESS F**KING HACK.
You got NOTHING. Zip. Le zéro.
You had dreamed of Gold. You could already taste the wagyu. But you didn’t even bag a Bronze. Even after 3704 versions of that damn case study. That poor editor. He came in on a Sunday, when his baby was like 8 seconds old. He should have been burping Lupita, but he was re-timing the supers to be more ‘cinematic’. All of it for nought.
Now you must front up to Elisha. To your Mum. To Lupita. To DoorAsh. And you have to explain that at that French award show - the one with the infinite winners - you are, somehow, a loser.
The Grand Prix went to an Argentinian shop, all of them infuriatingly gorgeous. Lilac Bazooka Buenos Aires looks more like a modelling agency than an ad one. They created a blockchain widget for blind, female dogs. Quietly, you curse those b*tches. The dogs too. It feels like they have taken something from you.
We’ve all felt this.
Of course, Justin Vernon expresses it a little more poetically:
Oh, but maybe things can change
What can wax can wane
Things can get replayed
And if it's all the same
Oh, just take my hand
And place it on your blame
And let it wash away
With you, I will remain
Good luck, b*tches.