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We have entered the sacred month for advertising professionals across the world. As Josy Paul puts it — The Olympics of Advertising will begin in two weeks — and India is determined to put up a good show. All year long, we have seen ads and earmarked the ones we felt were ‘Cannes worthy’, the ultimate compliment for any agency. While some of those entries are making it to the big contest at the Palais Des Festivals, some others are choosing to stay away because of budget constraints, after all the coveted Cannes Lions acclaim is not for the modest agency, lakhs are spent on nominations across categories in order to take home that shiny Lion. This year, entries cost anything between Rs 64,928 and Rs 2,65,846, depending on the category.
The 72nd edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will kick off on the French Riviera on 16th June, 2025, where we will see several agencies from India in attendance, namely Ogilvy, DDB Mudra, BBDO, Leo, FCB, VML, Talented, Atom etc. Some of these agencies have consistently scored at Cannes, while others are yet to make their debut on the mammoth stage.
For Rahul Mathew, CCO of DDB Mudra Group, who won his first Lion way back in 2005 for Colgate, there are categories like Direct and Media, which keep him on the edge of his seat, while there are others which have of late been rather tough to crack for India, like the Film Lions. Mathew explains, “I still think Film is the most prestigious category to win in. After all the Cannes Lions ends with that, the last thing everyone carries in their mind is those pieces of work that you saw in the Film category. It is a tough one to win. The best piece of work that India ever had in Film was Happydent, but even it didn’t win a Grand Prix. Everyone thought it would sweep the awards, but it didn’t.”
He adds, “The other category which I am personally excited about ever since it started, is gaming. It will become the largest media behaviour for the next generation, as India is a huge market for gaming. Also, we’re the only agency from India to ever win in gaming, so that’s something we’re interested in building on.” Mathew adds that traditionally India did very well in Print, but that has come down now, while we are doing well in categories like brand experience and activation, similarly healthcare.
For Josy Paul, Chairman and CCO, BBDO India, a Cannes veteran who is the Jury Chair for the Sustainable Development Goals Lions this year, says the category he is judging this year could well be the trump card for India, “India’s work for Whisper won a Grand Prix three years ago in the SDG category and agencies like Leo are consistently polishing this category from an Indian lens. India is the one country that can do great work in that area. These are still early years as SDG is pretty new. I’d like to believe that it is the most significant category at Cannes which will bring about a change in the world.”
There was a time back in the 1990s when Cannes Lions had just four categories namely Print, Radio, Outdoor and Film, today we are looking at 30 categories. While India has been winning on some of the newer categories like Glass Lions from year one, where we bagged the Grand Prix for ‘Whisper Touch the Pickle’, we have seen a significant uptake in the digitally led categories too. Entries like ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ helped Dentsu win the ‘Agency of the Year’ at Cannes Lions in 2022, prior to that Medulla Healthcare won the Healthcare Agency of the Year award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2016 ushering in some good times for India in the Health and Pharma sections.
Jitender Dabas, CEO of Cheil X and Group CSO of Cheil SWA says, “India’s strength is in the fact that we have so many complex problems that creativity can solve while transforming people’s lives. And yet, at times we get overdependent on that which results in similarities between work amongst different agencies, between trying to solve problems of a certain kind which becomes slightly formulaic. Then there is the other set. India is also a frontrunner in technology, when it comes to the likes of TCS and Infosys, we create a tech playground for the world as well. But our creative work currently doesn’t reflect much of that. The work that has been interesting in that domain has been far and few like ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ which interestingly didn’t solve an ‘India’ kind of problem. It put us ahead of other people in the mix of creativity and technology.”
Adding to that, Rajdeepak Das, CCO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia and Chairman of Leo, South Asia says, “Someone once asked me, “Do you think India is doing badly at Cannes?” I said, no! India’s doing great. “But what about India’s craft?”, he asked. My response was —Look at Vice, Cadbury’s Shah Rukh campaign, Whisper, etc., India has done some of the best work out there. India’s been amazing at Cannes Lions since 2022, we have won Titanium, SDG, Innovation, Glass, Data. Every year India’s winning in the coolest categories. What more do you want?”
It is not surprising that Indian juries and Indian work are both being noticed on a global stage, with brands like Whisper, Lays, Mondelez, Ariel etc which have consistently dished out good work from the country. In Asia-Pacific, India is one of the strongest players now, the question is will we cement this position even further, at Cannes Lions 2025.
Signing off Dheeraj Sinha, Group CEO, FCB India, who is once again taking his leadership team with him to Cannes says, “Regardless of whether we are winning or not, we just land up at Cannes, start having Rosé and wait for things to happen and Cannes is very unpredictable. So, our attitude is to do great work. Enter what we feel is good and not to agonize too much about it.”
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