Cannes Lions - The Ad Festival

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Authors: Sadhu Ramakrishna,
Research Associate,
ICMR (IBS Center for Management Research).

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India at Cannes Contd...

The joy of winning six awards was definitely there with celebrations all over. The success was supposed to mark the beginning of a new era in the history of the Indian advertising industry. Indian ads had just started to feature in several other international awards and even winning some of the awards. But, the year 2004 brought down the joy of Indian ad agencies as the awards won halved from the previous year.

This came as a surprise to the ad agencies. In 2004, there were altogether 24 nominations from India in the Press and Outdoor categories, of which O&M alone had 11 nominations. It won two of those 11 and Leo Burnett, the only other Indian agency to grab the lion, was successful in winning an award through its only nomination. O&M won both the awards in the Outdoor category for Hutch and Concern India Foundation. And Leo Burnett's medal came from the press category for its "Italian Seafood Festival" ad for Senso Restaurant.

Exhibit II: India's Performance at Cannes

Year	Agency	Lions (Awards)	Category
2004	O&M	2 (Bronze)	Outdoor
2004	Leo Burnett	1 (Bronze)	Press
2003	O&M	5 (2 Gold, 2 Silver, 1 Bronze)	Press & Outdoor
2003	McCann Erickson	1 (Gold)	Press
2002	Contract Advertising	1 (Gold)	Direct Marketing
2000	Forte India	1 (Bronze)	Film

* Compiled from various sources.

But, in 2004, the news which had really taken Indian advertising to the heights was Piyush Pandey becoming the first Asian to head the jury at the Cannes Lions when he was made President of the event. And this year, three other Indians are going to be part of the jury of the most respected and valued event in the global advertising arena. While Prasoon Joshi is on the panel for Print and Outdoor category, Sam Balsara will judge the Media Lions and Ramesh Iyengar will go for Direct Lions. This is certainly a big achievement and grabbing more lions will add to the joy of these ad men. Indian agencies hope to repeat the 2003 feat and brush off the not-so-good memories of 2004. Even winning a single award means a lot for the ad men.

The End Point

Indian ad experts feel that Indian advertising has been slowly catching up with the competition which is evident in the consistency with which Indian ads have been making it to the final list of Cannes Lions. They expect that in the next couple of years, Indian works would be competing for the top honors alongside the most famous American and European ads. The most successful agencies bagging lions regularly at the event are TBWA, BBDO, Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi. Now that the Indian advertisements have evolved as contenders in other international advertising awards, we can be hopeful of our ads making it to the top honors this year. While it is really nice to see so many Indians in the jury's list, it would be an even greater feeling if Indian ads win some more of these classic awards on a more regular basis. Let us see as to which way the wind blows? Will the creative works of India's top ad directors viz. Piyush Pandey (O&M), K V Sridhar (Leo-Burnett), Prasoon Joshi (McCann Erickson) and Balakrishnan (Lowe) be able to turn the momentum?