Slow & Steady: India’s winning spree continued on day 03 of Cannes Lions 2024

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Maintaining a steady pace of wins on day 03 of the Festival of Creativity, the Indian contingent added three more metals to its laurels – one gold and two silvers.

The Gold Lion was picked by Leo Burnett for Gatorade ‘Turf Finder’ in Creative Data Lions for data-enhanced creativity. The campaign is a tech-based intervention in partnership with Google Maps to provide open playing spaces to people living in crowded cities of India. The app analyses 20 years’ worth of historic traffic data and real-time insights to predict when roads go empty, turning them into playgrounds.

The on-ground turfs used in the campaign were modular, configured to be assembled and dismantled within 20 minutes to ensure maximum play time and give the roads back in time for traffic. These turfs became urban community playgrounds, reimagining open spaces for play unlike anything before in the world.

Rajdeepak Das CCO Publicis Groupe South Asia and Chairman Leo Burnett South Asia reacted to the win by saying, “The Gatorade ‘Turf Finder’ campaign is everything that Leo Burnett believes in – using new-age technology and data to solve ‘real’ problems and make ‘real’ impact. We are so proud that our work and vision resonated with the jury at Cannes as well as won us this Gold for Creative Data. We are thankful for our partnership with PepsiCo who have helped give this campaign the scale it deserves. Epic Brands Epic work.”

The two silvers came from the PR Lions category. FCB Kinnect got its first metal for the season for HDFC Bank’s ‘Lulumelon EOSS’ campaign for the use of events and stunts. The campaign featured Nora Fatehi and Anu Menon and was aimed at making people aware of online scams. It started with the creation of a fake brand called ‘Lulumelon’ which was then promoted online using targeted ads featuring a deepfake version of Nora Fatehi. The fake shopping website promised big discounts on products but when people clicked on the link, they were directed to a video of ‘Vigil Aunty’ educating them about ad frauds.

It was all done before releasing an ad film in which Nora revealed the intent behind creating this brand, making people aware of cyber frauds that could happen in the name of online shopping and discounts.

Elated with the win, Dheeraj Sinha, Group CEO, FCB Group India & South Asia said, “This is a great validation for the work we are doing for HDFC bank over the years. This is a long-running platform that FCB Kinnect has built for fraud prevention. I am so happy because this is real work for a large brand. Big congratulations to our teams and clients who’ve made this possible.”

The other winning campaign was VML’s ‘Sing to Remember’ for Coca-Cola under the single-market campaign subcategory. The campaign was an effort aimed at preserving India’s linguistic diversity. To launch Coke Studio, a beloved music platform in India after an eight year’s gap, Coca-Cola collaborated with up-and-coming Gujarati language artists, Aditya Gadhvi and Achint Thakkar, to create ‘Khalasi’ – a song that not only entertained but also served as a cultural statement. The campaign, using influencers, choreographers and singers along with the topicality of Navratri, got a billion people to dance, sing and celebrate in Gujarati – a language otherwise not in focus.

Celebrating the big win, Mukund Olety, CCO, VML India said, “It feels amazing to be recognised for a piece of work that has created a dent in culture. There are billions of people grooving to Khalasi and now we are holding 2 big metal lions in hand. In PR, it’s a Gold considering there were no Golds given in the category. This is for the team that is putting in the hours and doing some amazing work on the brand. This is for our clients at The Coca-Cola Company who dream big, push hard and make epic things happen.”

There were no wins for India in the five other categories for which results were announced on Wednesday, namely Creative B2B, Creative Data, Direct, Media and Social & Influencer Lions.

Here’s how the final award tally looks like this far –

Along with the wins, India also added five more shortlists to its tally in the sustainable development goals category.

Leo Burnett got two shortlists for Whisper’s ‘Period Science for Moms’ campaign under the Good Health & Well-Being and Quality Education subcategories and one more for the ‘Drops of Joy’ campaign for Lay’s under the responsible consumption and production subcategory.

The other two shortlists were for McCann – first in the Good Health & Well-Being subcategory for its most successful campaign this year, Buckaroo’s ‘Fit My Feet’, and the second in the gender equality subcategory for ESAF Small Finance Bank’s ‘Dabba Savings Account’.

Tags : #e4m #Impact #CannesLions #CannesWinners #LeoBurnett #FCB #VML #CannesDay3