PJ Pereira Releases Book with Former Cannes Lions Jury

Being a jury member for one of Cannes Lions' categories is no easy feat. Not only do you have to prewatch all the entries before arriving to the South of France, but you also have to spend a gruelling week away from the Croisette, debating with fellow jurors on which pieces to award. But at least the hard work stops there... or so we thought.

PJ Pereira, the co-founder and creative chairman of Pereira O’Dell San Francisco put most of his jury to work following his presidency on last year's Entertainment category.

The team produced The Art of Branded Entertainment, a book that features a collection of essays contributed by each of the jurors, shedding some light on their discussions in that eventful jury room as well as lending their experience and expertise around the worlds of marketing and entertainment. They also attempt to answer questions about what makes compelling entertainment content, particularly in today's digital context.

As the first book written by a Cannes Lions jury, it contains a number of case studies of successful Entertainment campaigns, aiming to help agencies and brands to create more effective and memorable work in future, so we spoke with Pereira to find out about where the idea to get into publishing came from and what the industry can learn from the book.

To celebrate the its launch, contributors Samantha Glynne, Gabor Harrach and Marcelo Pascoa will be hosting a 30-min panel at Cannes Lions 2018 titled 15 Things We Learned about Branded Entertainment, so make sure you don't miss out.

Above: PJ Pereira and his fellow Cannes Lions Entertainment jurors

How did the book actually come about and what was it about your experience as Entertainment Lions president that inspired its inception?

On the first day of the judging, I told the jury to forget anything they knew about Branded Entertainment, and all the definitions and principles they had been discussing with clients and peers. We were not there to teach the world what Branded Entertainment was. We were there to use our experience to learn, on behalf of the industry, what Branded Entertainment was becoming. We followed that principle carefully, learned a lot and picked winners that represented the experience. But after we announced them, we all had a feeling that so many nuances would get buried behind the spectacle of the winning reel and started to discuss how we could help the world hear about some of the inspiring discussions we had. Since I have been a novelist on the side for a while, I asked them if they would like to try to write a book and, out of 20 judges, 15 of us did it.

At what point in your presidency did you know that you wanted to create the book?

This discussion started two months after Cannes. We stayed in touch and kept talking about how a lot of the discussions we had - that informed our choices - would get lost unless we did something with them.

How much coercion did it take to get all the jurors involved in creating it?

Hahaha. Not much. I suggested one day, as I described above, and everyone said yes. The coercion actually took place when we were trying to get it done, not accepting. 15 busy people, the bosses in their own worlds, suddenly working together to put a single, coherent piece of thought in a fast-paced timeline was tough. But we got it done in time to launch it the day before the next winners are announced at Cannes, which is a very symbolic day for us. The day we officially pass the torch.

That said, the Entertainment case study examples in the book aren't just about the winners in our year. We wanted the book to be more timeless, so we took what we discussed that week in 2017 and what we learned after that, and gave previous examples that followed those same principles too.

Above: Last year's Entertainment Grand Prix winner, Beyond Money for Santander

And why did you feel discussing Branded Entertainment in a book format was so important today?

Because it is not only a new discipline with a lot of questions unanswered, but also one that involves so many disciplines that you hardly ever see people with experience in all of them getting together to discuss. The Cannes jury gave us that opportunity because we assembled a team that was not only global but included creative and media agencies, tech companies, videogames, marketers, talent agents, PR and entertainment executives. No one there could have done this book alone. Together I think we wrote something that is pretty unique and wide in scope and depth.

Looking back on your time as president, were there any memorable debates about the role of branded entertainment that you can share?

The discussion was on how we need to balance the return on the investment of money brands make with the time consumers invest. That is a very fluid idea, but the winners all reflect that in a different way, the Grand Prix being the absolute best example of that. (“Beyond Money” from MRM McCann for Santander Bank)

Having the chance to write the book after the discussions also allowed us to go interview some of the winners, learn the backstage stories that we weren't considering while judging, which made the process of writing very enriching too.

We were not there to teach the world what Branded Entertainment was. We were there to use our experience to learn, on behalf of the industry, what Branded Entertainment was becoming.

It’s the first time that something has come out of the jury room aside from the awarding of entries, why did you feel it necessary to leave a legacy and do you hope this will be continued in future?

Once we established that we weren't there to teach, but to learn and serve the industry, writing this book as a leave behind piece of thinking was a natural consequence. But it is a hard task that took a lot of commitment from all 15 of us. I would guess that other juries may have thought about this before, that others may have also felt the weight of the responsibility they had, but may have changed their mind once they looked into the work it actually takes to get it done.

Hemingway once said writing is easy. "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." None of us is Hemingway here, but we all poured our blood on this project. And couldn't be more proud.