India repeats Cannes at Valencia, Spain

The Intercontinental Advertising Cup awards, held its finale on November 24, 2007 at Valencia, Spain. India is the proud winner of two Cup awards. McCann Erickson’s Happydent TVC and Code Red Films’ Blind School commercial have won an award each. These two films had also won a silver and a bronze, respectively at Cannes, this year.

McCann Erickson won in the Best of Food category and was also nominated for The Grand Cup for its ‘Happydent Palace’ ad for Happydent chewing gum. While Code Red Films bagged the award in the Best Use of Local Culture for ‘Hostel’, a public service film for the Eye Bank Association of India (the creative was made by creative directors Manish Bhatt and Raghu Bhat while they were at McCann).

The film ‘Hostel’ was shot to promote eye donation. The film begins with a Holi celebration in a boys’ hostel. In the background, a Holi song is played, but at the end, one realises that the children shown playing Holi are all blind. The ad ends with one of the blind boys asking the warden of the hostel how many colours there are. The warden says, “Red, green, yellow…” The child then asks, “What is green colour like?” The warden is speechless. He only murmurs: “How can I explain it to you?” The ad ends with a super: ‘So many people including the creator of this film have agreed to donate their eyes after watching it’. The film ends with a message to all to donate their eyes.

The Happydent ad, which shows a ‘dhoti’, clad man running across town. On his way he sees men perched on lampposts, on headlights, on decorative lights and all other sources of light. The running man finally reaches the palace, and climbs up the chandelier. He pops gum into his mouth and smiles down at the king (shining light on him while doing so) who is about to commence his dinner. All the others who were perched too are now smiling after sunset to provide light to other parts of town with their shining teeth. (Submit your opinion on this ad.)

The other Indian agencies that made it to the finals are O&M – which had six entries as finalists – Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG and Everest Brand Solutions.

For the record, Asia Pacific AdFest winners/finalists automatically qualify for finalist status at The Cup. The Intercontinental Advertising Cup awards are a new concept in awards, gathering finalists from the major regional advertising festivals of the world. The finest professionals of the advertising industry are judging the entries, Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and national creative director, O&M India, was one of the judges.