Winning a Cannes Lions starts from the top, not from the bottom: Aalap Desai

Winning a Cannes Lions starts from the top, not from the bottom. It's unfair to make this an appraisal conversation later, if you, as a leader, haven't done enough to make it happen throughout the year. 

Anyone in the team can crack an idea, but it is the leadership's job to pursue it relentlessly and make it happen. Everyone needs a push. You have to accept that the team is also doing the work that runs the agency billings, so their job list is long. Make sure this stays a on priority. Find out ways to keep it there. 

Winning a Cannes Lions is not a four-month sprint. The leaders can't start pushing in Jan and expect the team to have stuff ready for submissions in April. It might have been possible 15 years ago, but it is not possible now. We have to start work on next year's Cannes a week after this year's festival ends. Dedicating time and energy all year round to review is the only way to do it. 

The market is tough, and clients need more and multiple assurances to release ideas even with less budgets than usual. The juniors cannot solve this. The relationship a senior has and the contacts they have with vendors is the only solution.

Not everyone in the team knows how to make a winning case study. They won't learn overnight, so don't just leave it on them. They turn to your experience because they need to. Handhold them and spend time, even nights, on the edits because when it comes to cases, there is no way to guess what is in your head without you sitting there with them. 

After all, if this is done, you need to get them the funds for the execution and the entries. That's totally your job. Make sure it is coming at the start of the year so that all the hard work gets the presence it deserves. It's heartbreaking if it doesn't. I doubt the team will try as hard as they did if that happens. 

There is no half-hearted way to do this as a leader. If you're in completely, I promise everyone around will be too. If you're not, everyone around you will be out of it too.

(The author is the co-founder and chief creative officer of TGTHR, a young independent advertising agency that won a Silver in the Glass: The Lions for Change category within 12 months of its founding. This piece was originally published on LinkedIn and has been republished with the author's permission.)