On the spidey sense guiding Ogilvy’s award-winning strategy

The diminishing marginal utility—the more you want and consume something, the less you want it—is a key economic principle. But advertising and its love for awards defy this principle every year.

Big and small ad agencies, like clockwork at the end and start of the year, spend countless hours perfecting their case studies and adjusting budgets to enter their best work into local, national, and international awards. To an outsider, it may seem more like an addiction than a passion.

There is a good reason for this contrarian behaviour—a win promotes agencies' creativity to current and potential clients. Second, a jury of agency peers selects the winners, making these awards important. Nothing is sweeter than being recognised by your peers and often, your rivals.

“At Ogilvy, even before Kainaz (Karmakar) and I joined, the culture was such that the first intention is to always make a rocking piece of creative,” says Harshad Rajadhyaksha, chief creative officer, Ogilvy India, adding, “If our campaign does not meet the jury room’s criteria, we do not lose heart.” 

“We have an intuitive sense of what works in what award category.”

Harshad Rajadhyaksha, Ogilvy

He cites the iconic ZooZoo campaign the agency made for Vodafone in 2009 timed for the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL): “It never won any international award.” The two say the lack of wins for ZooZoo does not bother them because they are prouder of what it did for Indian advertising and how “it set a benchmark like no other campaign.”

Two decades(ish) of creativity

Karmakar and Rajadhyaksha are no strangers to rocking creatives and countless awards. Both met and worked with each other at JWT (now VML) and joined Ogilvy in 2010. They've worked on amazing campaigns with the biggest advertising wins.

Beauty Tips by Reshma, an ad that portrayed an acid attack survivor giving beauty suggestions and pushed for a ban on acid sales, received Ogilvy India's first Glass Lion at Cannes Lions in 2016, for addressing inequality and prejudice.

Savlon Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks, a campaign to promote the use of soap during hand washing at schools for the ITC hygiene brand, won it a Grand Prix for Creative Effectiveness at the Cannes Lions in 2018 besides seven Lions.

In 2020, the two and Sukesh Nayak became Ogilvy's chief creative officers, a passing of the baton from creative veteran Piyush Pandey, now the agency's chief advisor. In that year, the Cannes Lions released its first creativity assessment of the decade, ranking Ogilvy Mumbai as the most creative Indian agency in Asia and naming the Savlon Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks an “iconic work” of the decade. 

Cannes Lions has awarded Ogilvy India 14 metals since 2020. In 2022, Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad, a Cadbury Celebrations campaign that used machine learning to put the superstar actor in ads for countless small and tiny stores affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, won India's first Titanium Lion for game-changing creativity.

“I’ve been on many juries, and no international juror has ever thought of India or Asia, or the entries that come from this part of the world as poverty porn. I think there are cynics in the country, who try to reposition it like that."

Kainaz Karmakar, Ogilvy

The following year, the campaign earned a Grand Prix in the Creative Effectiveness category at Cannes Lions.

Is this campaign worthy? 

When asked when a work signals its merit, Karmakar answers it depends on the work.

“There are some ideas, you hear them and you know in your gut if they happen, they will win. Then there are some ideas which are very execution dependent.” With activation-led ideas, she believes “you more or less know you will get it” but when it comes to craft, “one has to wait until they see the final piece.”

For instance, take The Impossible Choice for St. Jude Childcare Centres, an emotionally-charged ad campaign to raise money for the institution, which provides free housing and care to children with cancer and their parents.  

“We were almost sure in our gut that this is the most hard-hitting piece of work that we can do for St. Jude,” remarks Karmakar and says once they saw the finished piece and the social media response to it, “we considered it for awards.” The campaign won a bronze metal in the Health and Wellness category at Cannes Lions 2024. 

An indifferent client? 

Rajadhyaksha refers to creatives as sensitive beings in a profession “sometimes people tend to be cynical about.” It was an interesting statement made in context of Ogilvy folks working passionately to make Beauty Tips By Reshma come to life.

One wonders if the clients share the same sensitivity or empathy toward such causes. It’s an ironic question because on one end you see so many cause-driven ads aka causvertising, and on the other end, you imagine clients as the proverbial suits only concerned with the bottom line, nothing else. How hard is it to convince a client to come on board for such work?

Karmakar says clients have changed “vastly.” She mentions Unilever (one of Ogilvy's oldest clients) co-founding the Unstereotype Alliance with UN Women to combat advertising stereotypes. “Brands know diversity and inclusion are not just terms for their organisation policies, but their communication must include it,” she remarks.

A word of caution follows when she speaks about “force-fitting something where the client’s agenda has nothing to do with it.” Both must sync, of course. She nods to Dove soap's legacy of real beauty and how the agency's Stop The Beauty Test campaign, which challenged beauty biases against women, suited the Unilever soap brand's philosophy.

Categories, categories, and categories 

Many national and international prizes have their own categories. Choosing which work fits which category is an Everest the CCOs conquer every year. “We have an intuitive sense or of what works in what award category,” says Rajadhyaksha. Years of observation and absorption have honed their senses.

Spillovers occur when one campaign fits numerous categories, yet finances are limited, especially when entry fees are converted into Indian rupees.

So, say there is a work which feels like a sure-shot winner in three categories, and has a good chance in three more, "“If that work’s idea is fantastic and has really pushed our profession ahead then we might decide to invest in six categories for that particular piece and maybe two other pieces which are considered the strongest,” he reveals.

Who funds the entries?

There are specific number of award entries an agency can make every year. Ogilvy has a neat system. First, the three CCOs sit down and decide which ones make the cut. Then these campaigns must get the nod of the agency's Asia Council and Global Council. 

Budget is another big concern. Awards entries are costly. The 2025 Cannes Lions entrance fee ranges from Rs 75,000 to Rs 96,000, and the Titanium Lion entry fee is over Rs 2 lakh; the fees go higher as each deadline passes, there are four. 

Karmakar explains that the agency has a budget for awards, but it doesn't mean they splurge freely. After selecting say 15 pieces, four to five are considered contenders. However, there have been times when a certain ad film did not make the cut but the client feels strongly about it, they’ve told the CCOs: “Is it okay if I fund it and you enter it for it?” she reveals.

India amidst the jurors 

Poverty porn and India have been discussed several years; there are so many issues to solve in India so why not make a campaign out of it? 

However, recent changes in India's economy, tech stack, and start-up economy have led to a shift in the focus. Surely, the jurors must have observed the change in the work they see from India. 

“I’ve been on many juries, and no international juror has ever thought of India or Asia, or the entries that come from this part of the world as poverty porn. I think there are cynics in the country, who try to reposition it like that,” says Karmakar.

Agreeing, Rajadhyaksha adds India and Asia have a rich array of ideas that are not solely focused on poverty or underprivileged issues. 

On the use of artificial intelligence in campaigns, the CCOs say that the jury room is equipped to know when AI or technology is used as a crutch without a strong connection to a strong idea. It's all about the idea, of human ingenuity using machines than being dependent on it. Unsurprisingly, Ogilvy India’s recent campaign for Cadbury 5 Star revolved around making AI mediocre again.