From Shruti's desk
YES, WE CANNES!
Till quite recently, all roads did lead to Cannes, once a fishing village and now, one of the most exciting places to visit in the South of France. This is also the venue of the annual international advertising festival - Cannes Lions - now in its 56
th year.
We've been hearing about how deeply advertising, marketing and communications have been affected by the global recession and this was more than evident by the almost 40 per cent dip in the number of delegates and entries at Cannes this year.
But the mood was positive amongst delegates too, so despite the print display areas looking almost bare most days of the festival, it was made up by people wanting to watch award winning entries on Apple screens.
Clearly it did not deter bigwigs like YouTube from attending the festival, hoping to leave an even better impression in the minds of young directors who could use the platform to showcase their work. We were told that YouTube now will be venturing into long-format - so no more 10 minute clips only. Soon, you'll be able to watch full movies (free of course!)
And there was no dearth of celeb power even at the Cannes Lions! Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations and singer Bob Geldof teamed together for the TCK TCK TCK campaign on Climate Change, leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference which will take place in Copenhagen in December.
There was also actor, producer and director Spike Lee - among other well-known industry bigwigs. And then of course, the much anticipated Cannes Debate. Of course when you have WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell engage the chief marketing officers of some of the biggest brands - P&G, McDonalds, J&J and Kraft - everyone sits up and listens. After all these are the companies with the largest adspends and what they do will matter, especially in these times. Recession clearly means that now the search is for value through a mix of media and rate negotiations. But an important point that was discussed was the much debated client-agency relationship!
But as always the spotlight was clearly on the winning campaigns from around the world. After all, a win at Cannes is the ultimate for any creative. And there was absolutely no doubt about some of the winners and no surprise...The Obama/Biden campaign not only got a resounding applause but also walked away with the Grand Prix in the Titanium & integrated categories AND a special award.
There were other popular campaigns like this grand prix winner in the interactive and direct marketing category for that's right -
the best job in the world - to raise awareness of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef, this campaign was created for a position that sounds too good to be true. News of the opportunity spread across online news sites, forums and blogs and within 2 months islandreefjob.com had over 6 crore visits and over 36,000 people from over 200 countries applied.
The grand prix in the films category went to a film which was hosted on a website - Carousel. The interactive film tells you about the three main features of Philips televisions - Ambilight, Cinema 21:9 and Picture Quality - and ties these features to the art of film making. You can also interact and move the camera back and forth frame by frame. Clearly a reflection of advertising to come in future.
Other not so surprising winners in the film category is this gold winner for VW's Dogfish - so it was not surprising that the global marketing team of VW were an ecstatic lot having won the ADVERTISER OF THE YEAR!
But, the biggest high perhaps was for the Indian advertising fraternity! After years of waiting to win gold in the film category, there was not one but two for JWT - for The Times of India that includes best use of music.
India excelled in the media category and among others walked off with a media gold for
Gillette Mach 3 by Mediacom.
India also managed 2 silvers in the design category for
P&G's TIDE DETERGENTS
by LEO BURNETT INDIA Mumbai and
SULAKSHAN KULKARNI CRICKET ACADEMY by RED LION PUBLICIS Mumbai.
There was however, one disappointment. Zoozoo's which became a rage during the IPL and won the hearts of millions of Indians and was even voted as the most popular viral campaign by Adage, failed to catch the jury's imagination. Of course, not that there is any connection - but Prasoon Joshi was on the jury for titanium and integrated categories and Zoozoo's is a concept by O&M - which is headed by none other than arch rival Piyush Pandey! O&M's creative honcho did not mince words, choosing instead to say "there are a lot of blind judges out there!"
So, overall, an exciting Cannes Lions 2009 and despite the gloom of recession, a creatively stimulating festival. However, as most industry insiders admit, the real action begins NOW as clients begin to cut marketing budgets and re-negotiate agency fees as creatives are compelled to bring in more insight and value into campaign strategies with a conservative media mix. As pressure on bottomlines increase, can we expect more bundling in future? - that is, the coming together of all aspects of advertising and communication - creative, media, PR, cyber and other specialised outfits under one roof, as clients increase their demand for it? Well...we'll keep you posted.
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