If They Cannes You Cannes: 2021 Champion Max Learmont On His “Come First Or Come Last” Mindset

The search for Australia’s best young media, creative and marketing professionals is on!

Gen Zs and Millennials seem to cop a bad rap these days. We’re portrayed as fragile, entitled; that we only get off our phones to jump on a bandwagon. 

But we at B&T know there’s no shortage of smart, hardworking and creative young people working in this industry. 

And with the TikTok Young Lions competition open for entry, we’re on the lookout for the best and brightest young talent to represent Australia at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

When it comes to such movers and shakers, there’s a dynamic duo in our industry we can’t ignore: Max Learmont and Nolan Yu.

Last year the pair triumphed in one of our most competitive Young Lions categories: Media. They went on to take home the coveted Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the Oscars of our industry, and a global benchmark for creative excellence.

Our mission to learn firsthand from the dream team began earlier this week when we sat down with Yu. Today, we’re delighted to hear from Max Learmont, a multi-industry-award winning strategist driven by his passion for creativity, e-commerce and technology. 

When he’s not working on his 3-point shot, he’s busy accruing big names to his formidable portfolio: Commbank, The University of Sydney and BWS, to name a few.

The latest feather in Learmont’s cap? A promotion to strategy director at The SPEED Agency. So if you want to know what it means to be the industry’s “best and brightest”, listen up…

B&T: What inspired you to enter the Young Lions competition?

ML: When I was just starting my career I was working at a digital agency called Reprise, and I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do within advertising.

One day, we had an all-staff meeting to see two people present their Young Lions Global Entry. And I was just sitting there in the crowd as a young, starry-eyed newbie, and I remember thinking oh, this is the coolest thing ever, you know, this is storytelling!

I knew nothing about strategy, or anything about media at the time. But seeing that presentation was like my North Star of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to end up achieving in my career. 

B&T: How have things changed for you since winning?

Not much to be honest. Initially, in the first couple of days after the news breaks your LinkedIn is firing. People are reaching out saying ‘congrats!’. Some people come out of the woodworks you haven’t seen in a few years. 

But I guess more than anything there’s the self-validation that like, yeah, you’ve gone out and done this, and you’ve achieved something really cool. It gives you a sense of confidence in your career.

I did get promoted afterwards, but I’m not sure it was because of Young Lions. You’ll have to ask my boss that!

B&T: What do you think set your response apart from the competition?

If I had to say one thing that really helps your chances of winning, it’s to challenge the brief.

If you’re the one team who challenges the brief when everybody else follows it, then you’ve already changed your odds from one in however many to 50/50 because you’ve taken a completely different argument. 

When we were in the global finals, the brief involved getting more people to read a 200-page charity report for One Young World. Nolan and I took the view that no one ever is going to read this thing because it would take eight hours!

In fact, we started our presentation by asking the judges to raise their hands if they’ve ever read a 200-page charity report in their lives. And of course, nobody had.  

So we figured the real challenge was to make it more digestible and more interesting so people can snack the report in little pieces of content. Taking that view, I think, set us up for success.

B&T: So for those thinking of entering, go big or go home?

A hundred per cent, especially for the 24-hour stages. Our philosophy was to either come first or come last. You don’t want to be in the in-between spaces.

B&T: What was the biggest surprise takeaway from being part of the competition?

My biggest surprise was when we were doing the briefing for the global competition, and we entered the Zoom chat. There were like forty other teams, from forty different countries on the Zoom call. It was just crazy to see the scale of the competition.

At that moment, I realised just how global the competition is, and being part of this global community that was competing was really cool. You had people from Sweden and Ethiopia and Canada, and these were the best of the best from their country. 

Let’s be honest, I’m never going to be in the Olympics. But doing Young Lions, representing Australia on a world stage with Nolan was sort of like our Olympic moment.

B&T: Do you think there’s something unique about the Australian media landscape that gave you an advantage?

For some reason, Australia, and New Zealand as well, really punch above their weight in terms of the quality of work.

I’m not exactly sure why that is. Maybe it’s something to do with how small our market is and limited budgets?

Perhaps this constraint produces better work because we have less money to work with, and therefore we need to be more innovative and more creative.

B&T: So, how did you celebrate the win??

I was in Tasmania with a few mates at Dark Mofo, and I was live-streaming the awards show on my phone in the festival dining hall. When I found out about the win I just started screaming and running through the streets of Hobart, giving people high fives!

Afterwards, we went out to the Hanging Garden Club, and we drank quite a lot to celebrate. It was a great venue to learn about the win.

B&T: Do you think there are too many awards? What makes Young Lions stand out?

There are definitely too many awards, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. 

However, it’s part of the game. A good marketer needs to know how to sell their own agency. Awards are really useful for this.

What separates Young Lions is it’s entirely focused on giving the spotlight to up-and-coming young talent in the industry. It’s one of the few instances where the people, not the work shine.

Also, the competition is gruelling. With a normal industry award you write your entry and then set and forget. 

With Young Lions you need a 1000 word written entry plus two 24 hour challenges. The combination of time pressure, teamwork and being required to think on your feet is a real gauntlet of fire. 

B&T: There’s no doubt you’ve had quite the meteoric career, most recently with your appointment as Director. But what’s been your biggest career blunder to date?

I’ve made so many blunders that it’s hard to choose just one. I think probably the biggest one was when I was working as an account executive at UM. And I was very new and very green.

I was working on the Lindt chocolate account, and I was in charge of making sure that their biggest video campaign of the year went live over the Christmas period. And I thought I did!

But when I got back from the Christmas holidays, my two bosses were sitting there looking very angry and I learned very quickly that Lindt did not end up getting their $200,000 online video campaign to run because one of the teams had not submitted it properly. And it was my job to oversee that everything was okay. 

Honestly, if I was in that position, I probably would have fired me, but I’m very glad they didn’t.

B&T: What did you take away from that experience?

It was a learning moment about paying more attention to detail and be more organised. It was like, okay, how do I make up for this? And how do I re-prove myself to the client and to my colleagues? 

And so it was about putting in lots of work afterwards to show that I was capable of doing the job.

B&T: So to our young readers, even if you fumble, you can still become a Young Lions champion!

Fumbling is how you learn. I’m sure I’ve got a lot of stuff-ups ahead of me!

B&T: What other final words of wisdom can you lend to our prospective participants?

If you don’t win or get nominated the first time you enter, don’t take it too hard. 

I think I entered this award like six times, and only really got half-decent at it in the last two or three attempts.

So try, and try again. Persistence is key.

If you’re under 30 the TikTok Young Lions competition is one of the best places to celebrate your creativity. Entries are open to teams of two young communication professionals.

The 2022 categories are: Media, Digital, Film, Marketing, plus a brand-new category for Design professionals.

Get started on your entry HERE, as the deadline for submissions (14 MARCH 2022, 5pm AEDT) will be here before you know it! You can find all the details you’ll need to enter right HERE.