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Lions At The Gate

Here goes: a report on the Cannes adfest, complete with roarers and howlers from India.

By Shailesh Dobhal

Cannes: Indian howlers

Not bad. Not bad at all. India's advertising awards tally at the Cannes festival, as this report went into... well, cyberspace, was an uplifting one bronze, two silver and three gold Lions.

Quite a haul, that. McCann won a gold for its Coca Cola print ad that had crates stacked up like two familiar towers. O&M won for 'Smoking Cures Cancer', an outdoor ad for the Cancer Patients Aid Association (yes, this client's 'Second hand Smoke Kills' won a gold last year) and another for a BusinessWorld direct mail package that we at Business Today did not receive are thus unable to describe. O&M won two outdoor silvers for its other anti-smoking ads and a direct marketing bronze for Hutch ET as well.

In all, India had sent some 65 adfolk and 300 print and outdoor entries (of which 27 got short-listed) to Cannes this year, no mean achievement considering that the entries alone cost a good 290 euros a pop. Still, the festival must surely be hoping to double the entries from India next time round, now that it's the roar from way way away, the Palais in Cannes, that's doing all the adrenalin pumping for an otherwise somber industry. Voice-box pumping as well, judging from reports of voice-man Chetan Shashital leading a 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' chorus on the Palais steps - just in case you missed the Indian contingent's chief motivating force on display.

Even without having to translate the desi exotica for the benefit of curious onlookers, there was much to keep India's creative minds buzzing. As you might guess, there was a lot of advertising gyan going around. There was, for example, Tarsem Singh, the man behind countless award-winning ads and even music videos, who did his own bit for national pride and sundry other variables that get spotlighted on foreign jamborees.

If 'winning' was the print and outdoor theme, 'losing' was it for films, by and large (all the more reason Tarsem was in demand). Of the 55 entries from India in the fiercely competitive adfilm category (550 euros a pop), only three got shortlisted. Leo Burnett's 'Save the Tiger' and 'Save the girl child', and Concept Advertising's ad for Birla Sunlife Insurance. No sleep lost here, REM or otherwise.

The buzz of the film circuit was Honda Accord's latest 'Cog' commercial crafted by Wieden & Kennedy... and what craftsmanship it is. The agency literally pulled an Accord apart and shot a breathtaking 'domino' chain reaction created from the car's innards --- to represent engineering perfection and harmony in motion. This was the clear favourite for the film Grand Prix, though 'Sheet Metal', a Saturn commercial from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, also got a lot of rave reviews.

The print Grand Prix was almost awarded to an ad campaign for a Portuguese bookstore, but was disqualified for not having used any paid media for it ('fake ad' boo boo). The new winner was Grey New Zealand's poster campaign for KiwiCare, a bug-killer, but controversy erupted again -- with claims that this 'fly honeycomb visual' idea was lifted from a 1990s' Gary Larson cartoon featuring the same tagline ('The last thing a fly ever sees'). The festival's CEO Terry Savage, however, struck down the complaint.

Another print ad that wowed a lot of award junkies was for Sony Playstation (TBWA Paris) titled 'Rebirth', showing the head of a grown man emerging from the womb --- ooh-la-la --- of a svelte model.

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