THE Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity every year celebrates advertising which is more than just ‘art’ and has influenced people’s lives. This year, the new category, Glass Lion, which recognises work that implicitly or explicitly addresses issues of gender inequality or prejudice, through the conscious representation of gender in advertising, saw India’s BBDO take away the Grand Prix for its Touch the Pickle campaign for Procter & Gamble. The win did start a debate amongst others from the fraternity on the choice, but the jurors—eight women and only two men—felt the work tackled the gender issue in a way that is innovative and disruptive while entertaining and engaging. And while India relished the moment, but with only a total of 13 metals in the kitty, many are wondering whether India’s performance was the worst ever in the last five years.
Fourteen metals fewer than 2014, the industry feels that it is time to introspect especially when it comes to new media categories. With either a lone shortlist or none at all in categories such as Direct, Promo & Activation, Innovation, Design, Creative Data in contrast to traditional categories such as Press, Outdoor, PR, etc., one thing is clear—while Cannes and the others have moved on, India still lags behind. “Every year is not a summer. The quality of work and expression globally, with content and technology so well-blended and enabled, is only going up. Against those standards it was hard,” says Sunil Lulla, chairman and MD, Grey Group India.
Lulla’s views are seconded by Pratap Bose who recently launched a digitally driven agency called Social Street. “Purely based on statistics of the entries sent (945 ) and metals won, it has been a bad year for India at Cannes. India seems to follow the old adage ‘If you win at something, keep going at it’ and that is the reason that today we focus on categories such as Press and Outdoor where we perform well instead of taking up something new,” he says. Taking the example of Touch the Pickle, Bose says that though the film wasn’t very well crafted, the judges looked beyond it and were charmed by the lives it touched as a large client did its bit on a sensitive issue.
Press saw the highest number of shortlists from the country at 18 and secured four Lions, including three Silver Lions and one Bronze Lion in the category. McCann Worldgroup bagged the first Silver Lion campaign for Dabur’s Gastrina, titled French Horn, Flugel Horn and Saxophone. The agency also took home a Silver Lion for Essel Group’s Dish TV, titled Puddle and Basement. While DHL Hands – Ripped, DHL Hands – Cutter and DHL Hands – Scissors done for DHL’s Express Courier Services got a Silver Lion for Grey Worldwide India, Taproot Dentsu took home a Bronze Lion for Bennett, Coleman & Co’s publication Mumbai Mirror’s Pimp. As for Outdoor, India won six metals with McCann Worldgroup India winning two Silver Lions and Creativeland Asia bagging one Silver Lion. Grey Worldwide Mumbai, DDB Mudra Group and O&M Mumbai bagged one Bronze Lion each.
“Such wins were okay in the days when everyone focused on the traditional medium,” says KV Sridhar, CCO, SapientNitro. “Now the world has changed, new categories are coming up so we need to be aware of what’s happening around us and learn the art if we want to excel in it. For us, digital means a Twitter campaign, a 3-4-minute Youtube video or three Facebook posts. A lot more can be done as in Kan Khajura Tesan if we only innovate, rather than following a set pattern. Agencies, clients and technology companies need to come together to serve the consumer who is ten steps ahead of the advertising agencies today.”
Eons ago,television commercials used to be radio jingles with a video, recall experts, but slowly the industry learnt the art of creating an emotional connect with consumers on that platform. Now with internet, one needs to go a step further to ‘live’ with the audience. “The promo, activation, outdoor, direct, media ideas which the world is producing are at a massive scale with the right amount of technology being used to get the brand ideas come alive. Even we have such ideas but our digital/technology integration is at a very basic level,” points out Santosh Padhi, co-founder and CCO of Taproot Denstu.
Rahul Mathew, who joined DDB Mudra from McCann Erickson last year to head the agency’s creative unit for West India, last year was a busy year for India. “A lot of change has been happening in agencies at all levels. So a lot of people who would guide, as well as many who would do have been either in between or settling into their new jobs.”
Many even suggest that the reins should be handed over to the younger generation. “The younger generation is much more experimental, but not every experimental idea can be worthy,” says Manish Bhatt, founder director at Scarecrow Communica- tions. He says instead of focusing on the wins, the creative fraternity needs to push itself to perform well and work for the client and the country.
On the same note, Grand Prix winner BBDO India’s chairman and CCO Josy Paul points out that one needs to look at this year’s performance with a broader perspective. “The country won the inaugural Glass Lion Grand Prix as well as the second most prestigious Glass Lion (a gold). It also won the Creative Effectiveness Award for HUL’s Kan Khajura Tesan. These are the most significant emerging categories at Cannes. We’ve never had it this good in any other year,” he says.
For India to do well not only at Cannes but numerous other award shows , experts say the ad fraternity needs to stay focused and have faith in itself. “I feel we should keep doing Indian stuff, and that which works for our consumers. It’s just a myth that juries do not take pains to understand a regional or a local idea,” says Padhi. “Creativity is all about trying doing new stuff. So all we need to do is experiment a lot more, play the shots that we are good at, and get better at our craft.”
