'The Jury Is Like The Editorial Board' - Weber Shandwick's global CCO Tom Beckman

"Anyone can have opinions," says Weber Shandwick's global CCO Tom Beckman. But not anyone can be a jury president at Cannes Lions, where it takes more than just a roar to be noticed.

For Beckman, like lions, good PR ideas need to withstand tough, unforgiving environments. Conservation and financial backing alone are no guarantee of a fruitful future.

Prior to the acquisition of Prime Sweden by Weber Shandwick, creative leadership led the agency to top the Cannes Lions rankings over PR agencies on many occasions. He has continued to lead the team for the ten years since it was bought by the IPG-owned business too.

In that time he has helped to push the creative game forward as part of the agency's aim to be an "agency of the future".

Heading up the PR jury this year, Beckman is not only a highly experienced juror, he is also no stranger to being on the receiving end of awards with Cannes Grand Prix, Clios and Lia's to his name.

From a need to support the array of talent in creative PR, to jungles, upholding prestige and meme-ification, he shares what he's looking for this year, what he's expecting to see and what he's hoping to see.

Creative Salon: Talk us through the role of the jury

Tom Beckman: The jury process and awards shows are very much like academia. Academics write a scientific paper and then they send that to a scientific journal for publication. For example Nature or the Lancet are the more prestigious ones. You send your article and it’s peer reviewed. And it’s an editorial board of experts and scientists that will peer review your article and if they think it’s good enough they’ll publish your paper.

Our industry works in exactly the same way. We have ideas. We seek funding for those ideas from clients. We conduct the campaign, we do the case study and then we send it to Cannes Lions for peer review.

So the jury is like the editorial board of experts looking at the work to determine if it is good enough to be awarded or recognised. It’s a very proven process but everything rests on whether the peer review process is trustworthy. The reason why the Lancet or Nature are prestigious publications is because it's very hard to get your scientific article published there.

The job of the jury is to establish benchmarks so the industry can evolve and move forward. Anything that gets awarded should be considered best practice within its category whether that be healthcare, automotive or business-to-business.

CS: What key traits does a jury president need?

TB: Like most things – take architecture for example – any old person can have a strong opinion about it. But if you ask architects they won’t just have a strong opinion about architecture – they’ll also have a point of view on why they like it or why they don’t like it.

Anyone can have opinions. It’s the ability to explain why something is good that counts. In order for you to be able to explain why something is good you need experience and references, but also some awards history that makes you a good juror. You need to know what’s the best work, the work that’s been awarded in the tier one shows for the past five years.

You have to know the environment. You have to know the types of solutions and the types of ideas that you might encounter in the process. 

Then you have to be able to ask fundamental questions: can I summarise the idea in one or two sentences? Is the idea built on a unique insight? Can I see the strategy behind the work? Is the way it’s implemented making the idea better or worse?

CS: This year - what are you looking for in particular?

When you’re in the jury you don’t represent your agency, your country, or your network, you represent the industry. Because that’s the job – to help the industry move forward. So I don’t care who wins within the PR category, or whether it’s a PR firm, advertising firm or consultancy. It doesn’t matter to me.

The only thing that matters to me is that the work that gets recognised in the category is moving PR forward.

The criteria that I set for this year was to really focus on the definition of earned and in this case my analogy is that earned ideas are ideas that can survive on their own without artificial support. I describe it as surviving in the jungle, not just the zoo.

So, that’s an idea that can survive in the jungle, which is the real world rather than just the cute beautiful idea that you can keep alive in the zoo with life support.

CS: What are the main changes you hope to see within the PR Category

The truth is that there are not too many experienced jurors within PR which is an interesting situation. It’s still a new category which has only been around for rabout 15 years. Most PR firms still don’t have fully developed creative capabilities so in the industry there aren’t that many experienced senior creatives who have experience not only doing work on the highest level but also reviewing work.

The industry needs to be better at building nurturing talent within the PR space and making sure that they have proper jury experience. There are a lot of talented people and talented creatives. I’m not worried about the talent pool. What I am worried about is the experience.

What key themes are set to come up this year?

Meme-ification sounds like an irritating buzzword and in a way it is but it also represents a shift in the tone of voice and expression of branding that will probably not change or go back. 

It’s due to the fact that people are now consuming news through Instagram reels and TikTok and non-conventional channels. Marketing was always designed to fit the channel that it was pushed through so you had very expensive TVC commercials when the primary channel was well-produced TV shows

So meme-ification – where brands are mimicking the voice of the internet isn’t going to change. Nutter Butter is one example that really channelled meme-ification last year and they’ve continued with that this year. I’m sure we’re going to see more of that.

CS: Talk through one of the top works you've seen in your role as a juror over the years

Authenticity can be found in every single brand book around the world but it's fake. The brand book is just made up by advertisers and has nothing to do with reality. So authenticity and branding are typically things that you cannot mix.

When you talk about being an authentic brand what you usually mean is that your being authentic to the brand's history.

The 2023 work Adidas's Superstar Ravi is one that I've featured on my Cannes playlist. It's authentic to Adidas's brand story which was always about the underdog, more street and more multicultural than most other sports brands. In that sense it's being authentic to its own story.

I love the work and anyone that grew up in the 90s was touched by it - and the whole gopnik thing in Serbia and Russia and Adidas was a brand that got into your system and culture. It's still the case today...but it's just a brand.

What have been some of your highlights working with Weber Shandwick. What are you most proud of?

I’ve been with Weber Shandwick for 10 years now. I came through an acquisition when Weber acquired Prime where I worked and there’s been a deliberate journey to up the creative game since then.

I’m very proud of the accomplishments of my team across markets. In the first couple of years my focus was to raise the floor to get a solid even level of quality in the creative product. In the last few years it has been about raising the ceiling and making sure we can go head-to-head with any other leading agency out there. 

I think we’ve proved ourselves by not only winning Grand Prix for our own work but also developing programmes that have been critical in evolving not only our business but also our client’s business, and I would argue the overall PR industry.