47 trophies: How India cracked the code at the Cannes Ad fest 2022

With five Grand Prixs among the 47, Indian agencies had their best outing ever at the week-long Cannes Ad fest 2022. Experts point to a healthy mix of tech and creativity that worked for the winners

An ad campaign that gave a virtual tour of the British Museum’s treasure troves was at the heart of India’s historic haul at the just concluded Oscars of advertising. Aptly, the campaign conceived by Dentsu Creative India married technology with creativity — two critical elements that, experts say, have worked as a charm for winners from the country this year.

At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2022 (June 20-24), the campaign titled “The Unfiltered History Tour” alone won 12 awards, including three Grands Prix, a titanium lion, a gold, four silvers and three bronze lions. And with 47 trophies including 5 Grands Prix, two titanium lions, eight gold, 18 silver and 14 bronze lions, Indian ad agencies had their best outing ever at the festival in France that attracts the best of advertising.

Dentsu Creative India was awarded “Agency of the Year” at the fest, also a first for an Indian agency. Its “history tour” creative for Vice Media is one of 16 domestic campaigns that won significant awards this year. Among the other big winners were FCB India, Ogilvy, VMLY&R, McCann, BBDO, DDB Mudra, Leo Burnett and Byju’s.

“The feeling is surreal,” Ajay Gahlaut, group chief creative officer, Dentsu Creative India, said in a telephonic conversation with Business Standard. “This was a dream come true… to walk up the stage and accept the ‘Agency of the Year’ trophy at Cannes was the biggest moment of my working life,” he said.

The previous best run for Indian agencies at Cannes was in 2017, when they took home 40 metals. That tally included one Grand Prix for Good, for McCann, for its campaign titled “Immunity Charm”, created for the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health.

Between then and now, a lot has changed, as Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer, BBDO India, explained. India’s quest for metals (awards in industry parlance) at the 2022 edition was marked by “distributed creativity and collective focus”. “Eight agencies contributed to the overall tally. That made a huge difference. While some used tech well in their campaigns, some others were noted for the radical solutions they offered. To me, 2022 is the 1983 of Indian advertising. We won the advertising World Cup for the first time,” Paul told Business Standard.

Rohit Ohri, chairman and CEO, FCB Group India, said the award-winning campaigns by Indian agencies created both “new and surprising connections” for consumers as well as delivered “desired results for clients”. “In the world of digital pollution, these ideas cut through on the sheer power of creativity.”

FCB bagged 14 metals, to which the “Chatpat” campaign that focused on a 10-year-old social media influencer was a significant contributor. His street-smart videos on life were aimed at building awareness and raising funds for vulnerable children and families. The campaign was created for the NGO, SOS Children’s Villages.

In the post-Covid world, the advertising lens has shifted from agencies to content creators, say some experts. Agencies, therefore, are competing with an army of influencers who understand the power of viral content.

“Two years of Covid-19 has disrupted the advertising industry. The ad agency is no longer the kernel of creative talent. This is an era of content creators, who could be sitting anywhere,” said K V Sridhar, industry veteran and global chief creative officer, Nihilent HyperCollective, a digital and innovations agency. “Therefore, the marriage between technology and creativity has to be clever to stand out of the clutter,” he said.

Gahlaut said that digital is a far more complex medium than film. “It is interactive. There are multiple platforms and technologies in digital. It is a learning curve for Indian agencies. However, with the wins this year at Cannes, the floodgates for superior digital work from Indian agencies have opened.”

Ogilvy India, which won six medals at Cannes, used artificial intelligence (AI) to create hyper-personalised spots for local businesses in around 260 pin codes for Mondelez India’s “Not Just a Cadbury Ad” campaign featuring actor Shah Rukh Khan in 2020.

In 2021, Ogilvy went a step ahead and gave local retailers the chance to create their own version of these spots for their stores, using AI technology again. The campaign was aptly titled “Shah Rukh Khan My Ad”. It fetched Ogilvy a titanium lion, two gold lions, a silver and bronze lion each at the just-concluded edition.

“This is a piece of work that has found love with the masses in India and we are grateful that the idea has also found love with the hugely accomplished Titanium Jury at Cannes,” Sukesh Nayak, Harshad Rajadhyaksha and Kainaz Karmakar, chief creative officers, Ogilvy India, said in a statement.

Some of the other notable campaigns included VMLY&R’s “Killer Pack” for Maxx Flash mosquito repellent, which won a Grand Prix in the health and wellness category. Completing the circle of Grand Prix winners was Leo Burnett’s “Missing Chapter” campaign for Procter & Gamble, which was aimed at showing how a girl’s lack of period education contributed to her missing school days.