Gassing, kissing and balding: It can only happen at Cannes Lions

As India’s initial flood of gold slows down to a sluggish stream of silver, the mood of team India is a tad subdued. Also a tad conspiratorial, wondering ‘how campaigns we have never seen’ are winning so big.

It’s a moot debate at a place like Cannes Lions where, despite the numerous studies that connect creativity and effectiveness, there’s no way a demonstrably effective campaign like ‘Dettol Ho’ from McCann India for instance, will top a ‘Fearless Girl’ (also from McCann, but McCann New York). The only suggestion we have to offer, is if you’d like work that you’ve seen winning, get onto an ad jury or two yourself.

Speaking of juries, time was when jury presidents took their jobs very, very seriously, made a few dour pronouncements and left. The jury meetings at Cannes this year have had high standards of strangeness. For instance, a juror told us of a hijab clad woman who apparently interrupted the outdoor jury to speak of how she’s been harassed by the authorities on her arrival at Nice and intended suing.

On a more predictable and humorous note, jury president Ted Lim of Dentsu launched into a hilarious account of how tough — “there was a lot off hair splitting and hair tearing. Some of our jurors are now bald” — the judging process was, claiming beforehand that he’d carefully prepared this statement in English, a language he said he wasn’t too familiar with, and if questioned would only reply in Mandarin or Japanese.

In the ‘It can only happen in Cannes’ segment, our interview with Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever was interrupted by a furious rapping on the cabana. It turned out to be WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell who cheerily yelled “Stop gassing!” at one of his group’s biggest clients, before blowing him a kiss and moving on.

Indian Agencies Bag Three Silver
It’s all quiet on the awards front on Day 3. Leo Burnet India picked up a Silver Lion in Innovation for HP Lubricant’s ‘Roads That Honk’, the sole shortlisted entry from India. ‘Roads That Honk’ is an initiative to create a warning system that could make Indian roads safer. In April this year, the system was activated on NH1in North India, along Jammu-Srinagar highway. In Direct Lions, McCann Worldgroup India and Taproot Dentsu won a Silver Lion each for their work for the Ministry of Public Health, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (Immunity Charm) and Adidas (Odds), respectively. Eight Indian campaigns were shortlisted in this category. India had no contenders in other three categories of the day — Cyber, Creative Data and Mobile.