Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Today India won their first ever Grand Prix Lion at the Cannes Lions. JWT won the award for their work on Lead India campaign for The Times of India Group. The idea was simple yet effective. JWT created a reality TV show to choose an Indian that can become a political leader in times to come. This campaign was executed on print, tv, radio, BTL, Internet, on-ground and almost all the platforms available to reach the consumer.

This Grand Prix is important because it marks the arrival of Indian Advertising on the global scene. Indian advertisers have now proved that they are at par with (if not better than) their counterparts from other markets. It is also important because Lead India was a very visible campaign (compared to other winning ideas that are hardly seen in main stream media).

Congrats to JWT and winning team. Hope this would give inspiration to everyone else in the Indian creative community to create more commercial good work.

UPDATE: JWT also won the Integrated Lion 2008 for the campaign. Two big wins for India in one year. Kudos.

We live in a branded world. Brands are everywhere and without realizing you come in contact with tons of brands. I am right now at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. This festival essentially celebrates and awards the best pieces of paid for communication. Winning the lion is amongst the best things that can happen to anyone in the creative business.

I had an hour to kill that I utilized to finish some of my Google Reader list. Today has been an interesting day. The presentation on advertising in China by Saatchi and Saatchi China was ordinary to say the least. The workshop by Wunderman was brilliant. The Mindshare talk on Branded Entertainment was interesting. All in all an interesting day so far. Better than yesterday where none of the sessions was really impressive.

And for the lack of something really brilliant to say, I am right now in a lounge where free Internet has been sponsored by Microosft. From where I am sitting, without turning around, I can recognize following brands Motorola (Phone), Nokia (Phone), Blackberry, Coke, Macbook, RayBan (glasses), Puma, Adidas, HP (laptop), Evian (water). Not a large number by any standards but interesting thing is that all these are global brands and universally they stand for the same things.

Coming back to the festival, India has had some 20 odd shortlists so far. Haven’t had time to see the entries and work submitted by agencies around the world but will soon see and comment on them.

Wunderman left with a lot of food for thought and there are few ideas. Need to go back to Mumbai and work on them.

So far the festival has been very ordinary to say the least. Even things like scheduling is bad. Most of the sessions are overlapping and they could have better planned. For the second day in the row, the sessions are overlapping and everyone around here is been complaining about it.

More notes soon.