Judge like a stranger in Vegas
Ant Melder, founder and creative partner at Cocogun, landed in Las Vegas to represent Australia on the Ambient & Activation, Billboard, Poster and Print jury at LIA. Jury chair Aaron Starkman of Rethink set the bar early: find work with scale and impact — real work that real people saw, remembered and talked about.
Day one was a long sift through entries, Melder writes in a Campaign Brief diary. The best ideas cut through the jetlag; the rest blurred into the carpet.
The Ali Wong test
That night, comedian Ali Wong happened to be playing in Melder’s hotel. Watching a room hang on her every word reframed the judging brief. Our competition is not the next ad. It’s friends, family, games, podcasts, streaming and live comedy.
Melder’s question: what makes an ad, idea or piece of content worth even 10 seconds of their time? In a hyper-competitive attention economy, nothing gets to live in people’s heads rent-free.
- Judge work by whether real people saw, remembered and talked about it.
- Treat entertainment, not just other brands, as the competitor.
- Reward surprise, delight, emotion or usefulness over insider cleverness.
Day two confirmed the filter works. The winning set included unignorable ‘I wish I’d done that’ ideas and one audacious ‘how TF did they do that?’ moment, with debate described as rigorous and refreshingly politics-free.
Steal the 10-second filter
Before you present any campaign, run it against Ali Wong on stage. If the idea wouldn’t earn ten seconds from a tired, distracted, overstimulated viewer, it probably won’t earn a trophy either.
That means writing for the real world, not the review deck. The work that wins scale is simple enough to survive a first glance and sharp enough to be retold later. It earns attention the way a great live set does: through craft, surprise and a reason to remember it.
Source: Campaign Brief
