For Indian advertising agencies at Cannes Lions 2023, this was a year of ‘diminishing returns’, in a manner of speaking. Almost every agency returned poorer compared to 2022. This is both unexpected and worrying, considering we have a booming industry, poised to grow by 15.5% to reach Rs 1.46 trillion in 2023. And it doesn’t help to argue that a large number of the 800-plus entries from the country had made it to the Cannes shortlist—it is not the same as bringing home a metal. So, when a senior industry executive said that last year’s haul of 47 metals by India was a “happy anomaly”, one knew something was fundamentally wrong.
Is Indian advertising short of global standards? It is easy to see some of the things pulling it back. A large chunk of the work today seems to be stuck in the 1980s formula of Hindi movie-based song-and-dance advertising. The next big chunk is cricketer—or maybe a tennis star—as the purveyor of wisdom. For all intents and purposes, work that uses tried-and-tested tropes—of cricket, filmy music or Hinglish—is hackneyed and unimaginative. None of that makes any sense to an international jury. The Cannes jury is looking at contemporary, cutting-edge ideas, not the “cute” or “exotic”. Why should they celebrate something that is not breaking new ground?
Now, look at the work that has won big this year. India’s only Grand Prix came for Mondelez’s ‘SRK-My-Ad’ under the Creative Effectiveness category. The agency (Ogilvy India) and the brand (Cadbury Celebrations) used machine learning to create hyper-local advertisements that pushed both the brand and local businesses, giving neighbourhood stores their very own A-list brand ambassador. This is personalisation at scale. Shah Rukh Khan was not the idea in this case—he was just a tool for execution. So was Kapil Dev in Airtel 5G’s 175 Replayed advertisement, which gave Leo Burnett its sole Gold Lion. For this ad, Airtel recreated the in-stadium experience of Dev’s odds-defying 175-not-out innings against Zimbabwe during the 1983 Cricket World Cup for which there is no footage available—a knockout idea backed by some imaginative technical work.
In both cases, technology dovetailed the brands’ promise. That’s what clicked with the jury. In fact, a lot of the work in the fray this year showcased how technology can solve human problems. This, in any case, is the primary focus of every smart brand. The Cannes Lions has changed in lockstep with the times. From rewarding simplicity and humour to clutter-busting visual execution, the festival has shifted gears to celebrating lateral ideas that integrate emerging technology. But Indian creative directors seemed out of sync with international trends in advertising. The result is mediocre, safe and risk-averse advertising.
Agencies will put the blame at the advertisers’ door: Most big clients (read advertisers) are happy doing “safe” work when you really need clients who back clutter-breaking ideas at all cost. On their part, clients are not sure whether Indian audiences are ready for cutting-edge creativity. So being “cute” is good, and “effective” better. Is it? In the age of digital media, it is difficult to subscribe to the view that good ideas could be victims of cultural or geographical limitations. In any case, why distinguish between ‘creative’ and ‘effective’? Does it always have to be an either-or tradeoff?
