Diego Maradona said before one of his matches recently, “You don’t win because you deserve to, you win because you score.”
That’s exactly what I feel after one of my worst performances at Cannes so far. I thought we had good entries that deserved to win. It doesn’t matter now. Because the umpire has raised the finger and you better walk back to the pavilion.
You see the first time, I came here was in 2006, and I had the privilege of going up on stage and picking up a gold for a poster done by my team, Daniel and Suchitra. Then a silver here, a bronze there has always kept me interested.
This year, I have nothing to write home about so far, except the two shortlists in radio.
As I write this, the design shortlists have just been announced and we have four more shortlists: one for our client HP. It’s titled Mini Beginnings. Let's hope its takes the next big steps and gives us a much needed metal. There are three more shortlists from our Publicis Ambience agency.
Now the thing is if you come here and don't win gold, you are going to feel very very upset. A silver is good but leaves you with a feeling of 'wish it could have converted into a gold' Remember a Nike ad which said, “You don’t win a silver, you lose gold.” And bronze these days is like 10 runs in a test match, you got off the mark, but ok sit down. In the award shows, all the bronzes from each country are clubbed and they appear on the screen like fast-moving credit titles at the end of movies. So, you wait with your hands ready to clap, and when your agency’s work appears you clap and quickly stop before the next agency’s name is showed.
Last year, when the news that Gandhi picked a bronze after being nominated in three categories, I said, “phew”, not “wow”.
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Yesterday, I walked around a lot. Cannes looks exactly the same every year. Same weather, bit hot or, shall I say, bit warm in the afternoons, bit breezy in the evening, a bit nippy after the sun goes down after a long day at about 9.30 in the night. It looks like the same people are walking around. Some kids on skates doing stunts. In front of the Palais, people taking photographs against the red carpet. Everything looks the same. But the big changes are happening inside.
On the work front, new kind of work is being done, entered and awarded. Print, outdoor, the traditional pieces of work are not so talked about. It’s the new media-neutral, socially relevant, contagious kind of work that is winning hearts and metals. The direct jury chairman said at the award show last night that there should be a new term coined for the kind of work we are seeing these days: Creatology. Where creativity and technology come together. And we saw a lot of work that is using some cutting-edge technology. He also said: The main job of advertising is not to create ads but to connect with people and here creativity is just a tool to connect people. Interesting thoughts, I thought.
India had a bronze in Promo Lions from Ogilvy Kolkata. A Silver Lion in PR from BBDO for their Gillette work. Not the very best start from India’s point of view. But it’s still early days and we might see some ‘gold’ news in the coming days.
Emmanuel Upputuru National Creative Director, Publicis India