Countdown to Cannes 2012: Design will be TBWA India's stronghold this year

Design seems to have been TBWA India's forte in the previous year, considering that all the entries that the agency is pinning its hopes on to shine at Cannes 2012 have been entered in the Design category.

According to TBWA, the best work among its Cannes entries this year are those done for Adidas, Yatra.com, Imagine store and MKV Households.

The Adidas creative titled 'Sachin Postal Stamps' is the only one to have been also entered for a Direct Lion, besides Design.

For Adidas, the team at the agency was briefed to pay respect to cricketer Sachin Tendulkar as the country anticipated the occasion when he scores his 100th international century. Working on the task, a collectible mosaic of 99 postal stamps commemorating each of Tendulkar's 99 centuries was made.

With the Yatra.com campaign (Tyre Tracks), the brief was to announce that besides air travel, the online travel booking company was also a one-stop shop for road travel-related services. Using Yatra's known expertise in air travel bookings, cues were taken to design the poster. Many airplane icons were put together in the creative to create what looked like tyre tracks.

The work for Imagine retail stores, a premium reseller of Apple products, used 'Fingerprints'. The brief was to announce the iPod Touch gaming challenge at the store. The insight used was iPod touch screens that were smudged by fingerprints through incessant game play. The posters created and placed in the store featured smudged iPod screens that showed athletes in action made of fingerprints.

"It really can't get simpler than this," laughs Sengupta, talking about the entry. "It is the minimal piece of art direction. All that the art director has done is to add a full stop. Yet, it worked," he says.

And, it has worked indeed! The Elephant Combs logo has already been recognised at the One Show Awards 2012. TBWA India hopes it will recreate the magic at Cannes as well, along with its other entries.