The curtain has come down on the 55th Cannes International Advertising Festival, ending a tough week of carousing - sorry, I mean "work" - that brought together personalities including Rupert Murdoch, Sir Martin Sorrell, Microsoft's Kevin Johnson and, er... Craig David and Tony Bennett on the French Riviera.
In between glasses of rose and late-night drinking sessions at the Gutter Bar the festival did throw up a few surprises.
Perhaps the most obvious were the failure of US and, in particular, UK agencies to win awards in the press category and the unprecedented decision to "split" the eagerly-anticipated film grand prix between "Gorilla" and "Halo".
The UK has a strong history in the press category - DDB London took the Grand Prix for VW in 2004 and Saatchi & Saatchi London for Club 18-30 in 2002 - yet of 293 entries failed to get a single award. The US got just two bronzes from 615 entries.
So what went wrong - a random poor year or a shift in the creative global balance to agencies from other countries?
The decision to split the film grand prix, the first time in the history of the Cannes festival awards, was not well-received by some in the ad industry, with terms such as "soft" and "cop out" bandied about.
However, to be fair both "Gorilla" and "Halo" were cracking campaigns.
But so was Skittles' "Touch" and HBO's TV campaign, both of which were highly-touted as grand prix possibilities - but there is only meant to be one.
Some might question why two years ago Fallon's Sony "Balls" shouldn't have split the prize with Guinness' "noitulove" - it was certainly no better - or Honda's "Cog" which also failed to nail down a grand prix.
"Gorilla" was a polarising ad. Many agency executives were critical of it - perhaps the jury felt too uncertain backing such a left-field piece of work?
On a lighter note Cannes is also about networking and socialising as much as catching the riveting Rupert Murdoch/Peter Chernin keynote or Sorrell in full flow with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and AOL.
This year Sony BMG and Corbis took the cake with a Tony Bennett seminar and live performance. Havas' outing with Craig David never stood a chance.
Some grumbled about the corporitisation of the festival. Proctor & Gamble winning advertiser of the year, in comparison to recent winners like Nike and Adidas, is evidence of this according to the naysayers. But then it could be said that old timers always say that.
With close to 30,000 campaign entries, an expansion to 11 categories and newcomers like the Chinese Advertising Association's 200-strong entourage the festival is unlikely to be anything other than bigger next year.
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