Cannes 2009: Promo Lions: Will Gandhi win a metal for India?

JWT India has won a lion in the Promo category at the International Advertising Festival, Cannes, for the last three years. Promo Lions is in its fourth year in 2009. Last year, separate degrees of metals – gold, silver and bronze – were awarded in this category. At Cannes, any new category needs a minimum of 1,000 entries to have this segregation.

Last year, India got three nominations at Cannes – JWT, Ogilvy and Ideas@work.

This year, the Promo Lions category had 47 entries from India, out of which only 4 entries have been shortlisted for the final round. In 2006, there were 16 entries from India in this category, which increased to 31 in 2007. In 2008, there was one fewer entry from India, but this year, it is the highest ever.

Going by the history of India’s wins at Cannes for public service campaigns, our bet is in on the Let Gandhi talk campaign.

The objective of the campaign was to give voice to Gandhi’s philosophies and teachings, and to give Indians the opportunity to rediscover Gandhi. The core idea was ‘You can kill the man, not the idea’.

The campaign, which began this year on January 30 – the day of Gandhi’s assassination – from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), invited people to step into a large-size replica of Gandhi's sandals and take an oath of non-violence, and also voice their opinions.

These activities were followed by a campaign wherein people held placards with thought-blurbs consisting of Gandhi's quotes and messages next to his statues, murals and other representations in different cities of India.

The petition travelled to various places of public interest, including schools, colleges and youth hangout zones.

The Sports Capture campaign for Wespro Digital Cameras has also won a bronze in the Innovative category at the Clio Awards 2009. The idea was to highlight the motion picture feature of the camera. As per the activity, six-seven people, dressed as cricketers, enacted the different poses of hitting a cricket shot. The activity was done in a mall in Mumbai and a standee near these people talked about the motion picture feature of the camera.

Leo Burnett’s bet is on two campaigns – Stainbroidery for Tide and Pumping Hearts for Rotary International.

Based on the premise that Tide removes stains easily, T-shirts were distributed in three cities – Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad – as part of the Stainbroidery campaign, which began in November last year. These T-Shirts had embroidery work in the form of stain marks. When one pulled one end of the thread, the entire embroidery work would come out – thus asserting the fact that one can get rid of stains easily through Tide.

For the ‘Pumping Heart’ campaign, blood donors were given squeeze balls in the form of a heart to pass on the message of how their act of donating blood actually pumped in blood in the receiver’s heart.

From India, Atul Nath, managing director, Cannes Lions is part of the Promo Lions jury.