Cannes 2010: Ogilvy India gets its first Promo Lion

It's a bright, sunny day, after two days of cold and rain at Cannes. The morning is shining bright for India as well.

India opened its account at the Cannes International Advertising Festival with a bronze Lion, which is Ogilvy India's first metal in the Promo category.

The award is for Ogilvy's Meltdown campaign for All India Council for Mass Education and Development, the objective of which was to raise awareness on global warming. The agency tied up with a local ice-cream brand, Rollicks, whereby ice-lollies were distributed to children. On eating the ice-lolly, a message printed on the stick was revealed - alongside a picture of a polar animal in distress was the line, 'When polar ice melts, they die. Stop global warming. Visit www.aicmedindia.org.' The campaign was created by Ogilvy Kolkata.

Sumanto Chattopadhyay, executive creative director, Ogilvy India, who also handles the Kolkata branch is naturally elated with the win. He says, "Kolkata agencies are rarely in the reckoning for international awards, making the win that much exciting."

There were two shortlisted entries from India, the other being Bates' Stolen Signature campaign for India Anti-Virus, where it had used the carbon paper concept to copy signatures. However, the entry couldn't be converted to a win, because the idea wasn't a unique one. A few years ago, a similar idea was used for an Amnesty International campaign.

Talking about the other Indian entries, Vijay Singh, managing director, 141 Sercon, says, "In many of the Indian entries, the message wasn't clear on why it was important for India. Besides, many Indian entries were without a video presentation, including the winning entry."

Singh also said that while judging the entries, 30 per cent of the emphasis is given on the result of the campaign. For many Indian entries, the results were very negligible, with India being a country of a billion.

This year, eight gold (including the Grand Prix), 20 silver and 26 bronze metals were awarded in this category. The Grand Prix was awarded to Los Angeles-based TBWAChiatDay's Replay campaign for Gatorade. The campaign invited and encouraged people above 40 years of age to get physically active.

The campaign was based on a match played years ago between two school teams in the US, which had ended in a 7-7 draw. As interschool matches are quite popular in that country, the people in the older age group remembered the match. Gatorade got the same two teams with the same players to replay the match.

The replay created a sensation in the country. The 15,000-seater stadium was full to capacity. Besides, the match was also aired on the television, reaching out to 90 million households; and was also covered by major news channels.

Veldhoen says, "For a sports drink, it was an amazing thing to achieve."

The campaign was selected for the Grand Prix, because it did not stop there. The same activity was extended to other sports such as basketball and baseball, and to other matches, which had met a similar fate.

The other campaign that caught the fancy of the jury was the Heineken campaign, where people were invited through their wives, girlfriends and even bosses, to a fake concert; and attending the concert was only possible at the cost of a match between Real Madrid and AC Milan. It was only after 15 minutes of the fake concert that the trick was revealed to the audience, and they could then enjoy the match on a huge screen.

The president of the jury, Tina Manikas, global retails and promotions officer, Draftfcb, says, This year, we saw some fascinating use of internet in this category. However, many of the entries failed to capture what the on-ground activity was all about."