12599: Cannes Lionesses.

Advertising Age reported women will comprise 31.5% of Cannes Lions juries for 2015, making it the most “diverse” lineup of judges ever for the exclusive event. Not sure why adding mostly White women constitutes greater diversity. Also, given that women allegedly make up 3% of creative directors in the U.S., the 31.5% figure at Cannes shows gross overrepresentation. Of course, there’s no mention of minority representation being boosted in Cannes Lions juries—which warrants introducing the Ass Lyin’ Award.

Women Make Up 31.5% of Cannes Lions Juries For 2015

Festival Claims to Have its Most Diverse Lineup of Judges

By Emma Hall

At the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, 31.5% of the judges will be women, up from 28.5% last year and 20% in 2013, according to an analysis by the festival of this year’s 309 judges from 44 countries. There will also be five female jury presidents, part of the festival’s drive for diversity.

Three countries—the Czech Republic, Indonesia and Ecuador—are getting their first-ever Cannes judges after starting to win Lions. Ecuador’s judge is Eduardo Maruri, president and chief creative officer of Maruri Grey, which won nine Lions last year, more than any other office in the Grey network except Grey New York. Maruri Grey also won Ecuador’s first Cannes Lion, in 2012.

Mr. Maruri and the Czech Republic’s judge, Jaime Mandelbaum, CCO at Y&R Central & Eastern Europe, are on the Direct jury. Lucy Novita, creative director of Hakuhodo Indonesia, is representing Indonesia.

The festival is also relaxing a general rule that judges should be prior Lions winners, in order to further diversify juries. The Product Design Lions jury will include an architect, Ruth Berktold from Yes Architecture/Yes Products in Germany and a fashion designer, Priscilla Shunmugan, from Singapore.

A spokesman for the festival said in an email, “This will be the case for the newer categories where it is still the creative agencies entering and winning, and we want the real specialists on the jury. It is their expertise that is really important to us, not whether they’ve won a Lion.”

One jury, Creative Effectiveness, has three marketers as judges, including jury president Wendy Clark, president of sparkling brands and strategic marketing at Coca-Cola North America. The other clients are Lars Terling, VP marketing communications for Volvo Trucks in Sweden, and Leonid Sudakov, CMO, global petcare, at Mars in Belgium.