Nearly two months after opening up shop in Melbourne and tweaking its leadership structure, MRM is turning its focus to, what else, the Cannes Lions–more specifically, the fest’s under-30 Young Lions competition. MRM has launched what it’s dubbed a “Cannes-Test” (ugh) for those Young Lion hopefuls across the agency network who are aching to go to this year’s event.
The agency has launched an internal site (which they won’t reveal to us, of course) for candidates 28 and younger to submit a homework assignment of sorts: Turn in one paragraph and one visual representation of why they are the best candidate to characterize “I am MRM.” Submissions will be judged on “passion, creativity, delivery of presentation” and “capacity to attract new young talent to MRM.” Sounds like a pretty tall order to us. We’ve been told that submissions are given a lot of liberty for creativity and the agency is hoping to get a visualization of “I AM MRM” out of the submissions.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to see them until an external site goes live in May (winner will be announced on May 14; deadline is April 27). Whoever wins, though, will earn that trip to Cannes, get a full-festival pass, accommodations and meals and something called an “MRM travel kit.” The only catch, though, is they have to create an “I Am MRM” blog and post regularly throughout the fest. That kind of knocks the wind out of the sails, doesn’t it?