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Cannes 2009: Mediacom gets first gold for India; JWT Japan bags the Grand Prix

Mediacom India won the gold for Gillette Procter & Gamble, while JWT Japan won the Grand Prix in the Media Lions category for a path breaking idea for Kit Kat.

Indian media agencies have proved that they are no less enterprising than their creative counterparts at Cannes this year. In all, Indian agencies have brought home eight metals in the Media Lions category, which includes one gold, one silver and six bronze. Among these, only two bronze are for creative agencies. All the others are for media agencies.

Mediacom has turned out to be the star agency, with one gold and one silver for its work on Gillette's 'To Shave or Not' campaign, while Maxus has won two bronze for its work on Tata Sky and Nokia. Madison's single bronze is for BBC World Seva Trust's 'Say Condom' campaign, while Lodestar won its bronze for the Tata Nano campaign.

The two other bronze are for O&M's Sab Miller – for which it has also won a bronze in the Outdoor category - and Publicis India's much expected Gandhi currency campaign (which finally got an award).

Nick Brien, president and chief executive officer, Mediabrands, speaking about the Gillette campaign, said, "Initiating a national debate on whether or not to have a beard is a fantastic use of media."

The campaign was for Gillette Mach3, which was perceived as expensive by Indian men, who were opposed to paying a premium for something like shaving.

For this, Mediacom started with a research on the country's attitudes to shaving. The research revealed quite a few debatable points – were clean-shaven men more successful? Or, did women prefer clean-shaven men?

This initiated the great Indian shaving debate. Medicom tied up with CNN IBN and for eight weeks - the channel ran celebrity interviews, panel discussions and news stories around the topic. Similar tie ups were done with radio stations. The same debate was also extended on ground to malls, gyms and cinema halls.

The result was that the sales increased by 38 per cent and the brand awareness doubled. Even trials increased by 400 per cent, claims the agency.

While Mediacom was the Indian star, on a global level JWT Tokyo came up with a path breaking idea which changed the fortunes of Kit Kat in the market.

Kit Kat was fighting for shelf space in Japan, one of the most competitive retail trade markets in the world. To get over this problem, it came out with a solution which changed the business of the brand.

The Japanese pronunciation of Kit Kat sounds like 'kitto katsu', which also means 'surely win'. For this, the brand had established itself as a good luck charm for the most important day in a Japanese student's life – the university entrance exams. People gifted Kit Kat as a token of good luck to students.

Kit Kat decided to take this a step forward. The company approached Japan Post, which was recently privatised, with a proposal to co-develop an entirely new postal product. Such a tie-up was unprecedented in the history of Japan.

The company created a special Kit Kat package, on which anyone could write a message and mail it. These special Kit Kat packages could be bought at about 22,000 post offices across Japan. Thus, the Kit Kat Mail was born. Japan Post also gave space to the company for branding inside the post office premises.

The campaign received press coverage of more than US$11 million in media.

Brien termed this campaign as a fusion of a business idea and a media channel. He called it a ground breaking idea. "The best part is that it is a long term business plan," Brien told afaqs!.

A close competitor for the Grand Prix was the Zimbabwean 'trillion-dollar' campaign. However, the jury felt that the currency idea has been used before. About two years ago, the Grand Prix winner from New Zealand was based on the same idea. However, the campaign has bagged two bronze, apart from the gold in the Media Lions category.

This is also why the Gandhi currency campaign of Publicis India only managed to bag a bronze, although the jury found it to be powerful and adapted in a new form. The campaign also bagged the metal because it raised the spirit of Gandhi.

Overall, this was the best ever performance by Indian agencies in this category. Lynn de Souza, director, Lintas Media Services, who was part of the Media Lions jury, said, "It was an encouraging jury and as many as 122 Lions were awarded in this category. However, India stood out."

This year, India's performance improved because the Indian agencies made efforts to present their cases in a better way. Those entries which did not do so failed, despite powerful ideas.

De Souza added that while globally, digital integration was a mainstream element of any powerful entry, among Indian entries, there was no major use of the new media – digital, Internet and mobile space - even though the Indian entries were highly result oriented.