Recognition is currency and awards the manifestation of an agency’s glory in the glitzy world of advertising. Every year, the industry spends millions of rupees in sending entries to coveted award functions, planning their case studies meticulously, and celebrating each win with gusto. Just last year, the Indian ad land sent 809 entries to Cannes Lions, most expensive advertising festival to enter. It would have cost the participating agencies more than 509,670 euros, even if we just consider the base price of 630 euros for each entry. But a larger question always looms over – who do these trophies really belong to? Is it the agency or the team of spirited individuals who often burn the midnight oil to create award-worthy campaigns? The quandary took center stage once again as Leo Burnett Israel decided to give away all the awards that were adorning its shelves to the teams that have worked on those respective campaigns. The story captures what the Indian ad world thinks of the move and whether it is the right precedent to follow.

For Leo Burnett Israel, the project of giving away the awards to the teams started when one of their creative directors found a bunch of Lions, Clios, and some local awards getting sold in a flea market.

Nir Refuah, Chief Creative Officer and Deputy CEO of Leo Burnett Israel shares, “The creative director had to actually bargain for the awards which he had won at the previous agency he worked for; and it was a sad thing for us to see. Then we thought that we at Leo Burnett, and Publicis at large, are all about work and the people. We want to win awards because they are important to show we care about the work but are the physical trophies what actually matter to us? But they do matter to the people who worked long nights on these campaigns, so why should we not share the trophies with them?”

The agency thus decided to empty its award shelves and gave the trophies to people who worked on the ideation, the strategy, the accounts teams, and people in the management of said campaigns. For campaigns that had won multiple awards, the trophies were divided among the team members. For a few where there was only one award, it was given to the person who coined the idea.

Whose hard-work is it, after-all?

While this whole idea of celebrating the people who have worked on these award-winning campaigns seems noble, there are some practical challenges that might come in the way of handing over these awards to the individual team members. The first and foremost is identifying the right person from a wider team that worked on the said campaign.

Veteran ad man and one of the most awarded creatives in India, Piyush Pandey – who has been associated with Ogilvy for over four decades – thinks the win is for the agency and not an individual, “It is petty to think that the idea or award belongs to one person. To give you an example, our work for Cadbury – Kuch Khaas Hai (1994) – remains one of the most iconic campaigns and has also won the title of ‘Campaign of the Century’. But does that mean I take every award we have won for that campaign home?”

P.G. Aditiya, Co-founder at Talented feels working in an advertising agency is like playing a team sport, where the trophies belong to all. “While the idea belongs to the one who cares about it the most – as my colleague Binaifer Dulani says, the awards belong to a neutral space to celebrate the team. To give you an analogy, if one IPL captain wins a season and then changes his team, that doesn’t mean the team loses the trophy. While there can be exceptional cases where the whole team shifts, like what happened to us at Dentsu, I think the pros of keeping the trophy with the agency still trumps the cons. At the end the trophies are just materialistic. It’s the idea that stays with the creative. We started working on Tanishq’s modern wedding campaign at Dentsu but it followed us to Talented as well.”

He adds, “Moreover, there are enough events in the advertising world where individuals are rewarded for their work, be it the Lion of St. Mark or Impact 30 under 30. So, these people get to keep the trophies with them.”

Agnello Dias, Ex Creative Chairman at Dentsu India & Co-founder of Spinach Experience Design – who also won India’s first-ever Grand Prix and Titanium/Integrated Lion at Cannes in 2007 – agrees. He notes that the awards are recognition of a diverse and multi-faceted eco system that builds brands and delivers value to marketers, which in turn inspires capable individuals to give off their best.

He notes, “There are team awards and there are individual awards like ‘Copywriter of the Year’ and ‘Art Director of the Year’. It’s reasonable to have the individual awards given to individuals because they are like the man-of-the-match awards, a stand out individual recognition in what is essentially a team sport. But on the creative awards front, I’m sure the creative teams themselves would agree that they are only a part of an inspired eco-system that has planners, strategists, servicing people, canteen boys, studio artists etc who slog day in and day out so that creative teams can be paid well in order to get the time and space to be inspired. The question is, would those creative teams have won those awards, if they were not part of that agency at that time without the opportunity to work on those brands that the ‘entire’ agency has slogged through the year to build a relationship with? If the answer is yes, then those teams should be freelancing and winning those same awards on their own.”

One of the most prominent voices in the creative world and chief creative officer of a leading agency network adds, “It takes a village to raise a child. There are so many people who work on a campaign – there are servicing guys who sold the idea to the client, there are people in production who make the campaign, there are people working in the art department, someone working on the copy, and many more. How can we say that the award belongs to one person? The joy of working in advertising is that we create collectively, as a team. I think we should be proud of the work that we are creating. Work is the real award.”

It’s a costly affair to win awards
From a logistical point of view as well, the awards should remain with agencies, feels the Indian ad land. Right from creative to financial, to presentation of case studies, many people within the agency provide crucial inputs to make a winning campaign.

Rohit Ohri, Global Partner, FCB explains, “The agency pays for the award entry and often the global team guides the people working on the campaign, while audio visual credit for the award is given to the team/person who has created the winning work. But the victory 100% belongs to the agency.”

On being prompted about the awards FCB Group in India won under the dynamic leadership of then-CEO Ohri along with then-CCO Swati Bhattacharya, who incidentally managed to get the agency its first-ever Cannes Lions in six decades in 2018 and every year since then, Ohri added, “Swati has been a brilliant creative since ever, undoubtedly. But it was also because of the efforts that the global network under Susan’s (Credle) leadership made, which led the CCOs to deliver. It’s because of the collaborative environment at FCB and our creative culture that good campaigns could be made outstanding.”

Talking about the financial investment an agency has to make to enter these awards, sending one entry to only Cannes Lions this year would cost anywhere between 650 euros to 2,225 euros. The late entry charges only increase this spend. On top of that, sending delegates and teams to the French Riviera adds on another 10,000-12000 euros (including passes, stay, and food).

The number of categories at Cannes Lions has also increased staggeringly from just six in 2011 to 30 in 2024.

Creatives deserve more than just lip service
Another aspect that adland is concerned about, in this discussion of giving away trophies to each team-member working on the campaign, is the environment of symbolism it will create.

One of the leading agency CEOs in the industry asks, “To me it seems more like lip-service. Why would you give away the awards now and not at the time when they were won? It is a great thing to say and do but if you really want to be equal and progressive – just give the credit where it is due.”

Mukund Olety, Chief Creative Officer at VMLY&R India quips, “It is a great thought to recognize the team effort that goes behind any campaign. Most people in the business will not be able to afford a replica trophy that costs around 3-4 lakhs (for Cannes Lions). So, making them a part of the win is an absolutely welcome move. However, it should not just be limited to symbolism. Trophies are secondary, primarily you need to recognise the talent, mentor them, and give them a platform to grow. That has been the tradition at VMLY&R and we are proud of it.”

One must focus on uniting the industry
While there can be contrasting thoughts on who truly deserves the physical copy of the award, the larger consensus remains that the credit should go where it belongs. According to Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer of Wieden + Kennedy India this whole discussion on who should keep the trophy will take the focus away from this and only divide the agency ecosystems, disrupting a hard-attained harmony between the departments.

“Honestly, it feels like a PR stunt on the agency’s part. There are multiple teams and not just the creative department at the agency that creates a winning campaign. There is also the client who gave a go ahead to make that idea happen. Take the #BringHomeTheBud campaign Wieden + Kennedy did for Budweiser during the FIFA World Cup 2022 which won countless awards. The brand decided to send all the beers they could not sell in Qatar at the stadiums to the winning nation – Argentina. Imagine the planning, the work, and coordination between multiple teams of these two nations it would have taken to pull that off. The PR team for the brand worked too hard on this. How then can we say it was the creative team’s win? We all are trying very hard to build a collaborative industry and this whole debate on who should keep the trophy will only make this more difficult.”

The debate, though quite big, is also quite an uncomfortable territory to navigate for most agencies. The involvement of multiple teams, stakeholders, and people make it a tricky subject to discuss. Not surprisingly, agencies like Lowe Lintas, BBDO, Enormous, Famous Innovations, The Womb, Havas etc., which IMPACT reached out to did not participate in the story, citing various reasons.