Flywheel's Phil Camarota - Running a Jury at Cannes Lions
The CPG Guys are joined in this episode by Phil Camarota, Chief Creative Officer at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Follow Phil on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-camarota Follow Flywheel online at: http://www.flywheeldigital.com Phil answers these questions: 1. Walk us through what it actually means to be Jury President — how much of it is scoring work versus managing a room of strong personalities with different creative instincts? 2. Before you even got to Cannes, what did the prep work look like — building a "shared language" or judging framework with your jurors before deliberations began? 3. Creative Commerce is a relatively young category compared to Film or Print — did that shape how you approached defining what "great" looks like this year? 4. You've talked about expecting "AI tension" going into this year's judging — where did that show up in the room, and how did the jury navigate it? 5. With jurors from Singapore to South America to Europe, how do you reconcile genuinely different regional definitions of great commerce creativity into one Grand Prix? 6. Were there moments where you, personally, had a strong point of view on a piece of work but had to hold back because — as you put it — you're "not the arbiter of taste"? 7. Commerce creativity spans everything from in-store experience to retail media to end-to-end digital journeys — how do you judge fairly across such different formats and channels? 8. You're Global CCO at Flywheel, one of the biggest players in commerce creativity — how did you handle the optics and reality of judging a category so close to your day job? 9. Were there conflict-of-interest guardrails Cannes puts in place for Jury Presidents whose own agencies or clients might have submitted work? 10. Did anything from your Flywheel vantage point — pattern-spotting across retailers and brands — sharpen or distort your lens as a judge? 11. What did last year's Grand Prix winner, VML's "Preserved Promos" for Ziploc, teach you about what separates good commerce work from truly great work — and did that shape your criteria this year? 12. Now that it's behind you, what's one thing about the jury process that surprised you, and what would you tell next year's Creative Commerce Jury President to expect? CPG Guys Website: http://CPGguys.com FMCG Guys Website: http://FMCGguys.com SheCOMMERCE Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/ Rhea Raj’s Website: http://rhearaj.com Lara Raj in Katseye: https://www.katseye.world/ DISCLAIMER: The content in this podcast episode is provided for general informational purposes only. By listening to our episode, you understand that no information contained in this episode should be construed as advice from CPGGUYS, LLC or the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for research on any subject matter. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by CPGGUYS, LLC. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. CPGGUYS LLC expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual’s use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast.
