Renee Wilson thinks this will be the year PR agencies shine in France
Ad agencies typically dominate the PR winners list at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. But 2014 PR jury president Renee Wilson thinks this year will be different. Wilson, chief client officer at New York-based MSLGroup, talked to Marketing about how she’ll approach her role as jury president and why it’s going to be PR agencies’ year to shine.
You were a judge in the PR category at Cannes in 2011. What were some of the highs and lows? Renee Wilson
For me, the highs were the excitement over the work. To see the work and the variations on the work, from the developed markets to the emerging markets, is really quite inspiring. When you’re in a developed market like North America, clients tend to take fewer risks because if you fail, it has a huge impact on your ROI. If you’re in a smaller emerging market, you tend to take more risks, so when you’re judging at Cannes, you see some amazing creative work coming from smaller markets.
The lows were the way some of the ad agencies, which maybe didn’t understand PR as much as a public relations firm, would quantify their results at times. They would say, “We got a lot of free PR” and “We got a jillion impressions.” That to me was a bit frustrating at times, when I would see these entries with amazingly creative work, and the results were not really paying homage to the discipline of PR.
How you will approach your role as PR jury president?
I will still look to the approach that was taken when I was on the jury before, because that’s the tried and true way of looking at the PR discipline: research-based insights, sound strategy, excellent execution and the measurement outcomes. And what makes Cannes unique is there’s a special aspect of creativity that’s got to come through in the entries.
However, I will most likely steer my jury into looking at how creativity comes through in the different channels. In 2011, social media and digital media as a channel was not as well used as it is today, and to the extent that is today. I think there’s going to be a lot of really rich entries that use social media and digital channels to tell their story. For our jury, it’s going to be exciting to see how that manifests itself in the entries. And then we will have the responsibility of making sure the measurement is strong.
Ad agencies tend to dominate the PR Lions winners list. Why do you think that is and what will it take for PR agencies to win?
This year, I feel it’s going to really be the PR agencies’ year to shine. When we first entered into Cannes as an industry, we were not as attuned to how entries were produced and the importance of video in an entry. Now we know how the game is played. And PR agencies have gotten so much better in terms of the types of thinking and the ways we can communicate our clients’ stories. We are all about storytelling via different channels and we are all very much content-centric in how we get our clients messages across. So I think it’s going to be a very different game for the PR firms this year.
PR agencies have also been called out for just not being as creative as ad agencies. Do you think that’s changed?
Yes, I think the level of creativity at PR firms has definitely changed. For one thing, PR firms have evolved to have much stronger research capabilities these days that allow teams to really focus on the key insights to build breakthrough creative campaigns. Additionally, the talent makeup at PR firms has developed to include roles such as creative directors, copywriters and art directors—roles that historically may not have been a part of our operations.
The deadline for Cannes is coming up. What’s your advice for people working on their PR Cannes Lions entries?
The number of entries that a member of the jury reviews prior to Cannes is enormous. If you want to win in Cannes, boy, you’d better have something unique that can break through. Your video better be memorable, engaging and high-energy. You need to grip your viewer immediately because the judges go through many, many, many entries.
