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A Roaring Debacle

Business World Jul 06, 2015

India was conspicuous at this year’s Cannes Lions by its worst performance in years By Noor Fathima Warsia India had a disappointing year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the annual international advertising jamboree, as far as its showing in New Media category was concerned. It was a complete washout for Indian agencies this year as none of the entries were able to even make it to the shortlist in the category. Overall, however, Indian agencies managed to put up a decent show in the traditional media categories of Print and Outdoor. Besides, a Grand Prix in the newly introduced category of Glass Lions that awards ‘work done for good’ such as for social causes, they bagged 12 Lions including six silver and five bronze and a Glass Lion. BBDO India won the Glass Lion Grand Prix for its ‘Touch the Pickle’ campaign for Procter & Gamble’s brand Whisper. Although India’s overall performance cannot be described as bad in itself, its steady rise at the global platform makes its showing this year one of its worst. In 2014, India won 27 metals of which five were gold, nine silver and 13 bronze.<table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Jean-Lin-300.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 214px;"></td></tr><tr><td>Jean Lin, CEO, Isobar Worldwide Jury president, Cyber Lions</td></tr></tbody></table>The nearly 200 Indian delegates at Cannes Lions this year looked visibly disenchanted with the performance despite the Grand Prix. Multiple reasons have been cited for the poor performance, but it all eventually boils down to the quality of work. Says Rajiv Rao, chief creative officer, Ogilvy & Mather: “The idea should be powerful enough to catch a jury’s attention. As proven by the Grand Prix winner, the ‘Touch the Pickle’ campaign, the content should be relevant to the country. A good idea can win in any category.” The fact remains that Indian agencies have yet to prove themselves in the newer categories such as Cyber Lions, Mobile Lions, Creative Data or even the Innovation Lions category. “India needs to work really hard and do fresh work. Unlike Print and Television, Cyber and Mobile are categories that Indian agencies are still trying to understand so there is still some time before we begin creating work that competes and wins at the global level,” says Rao. Besides, it’s time Indian agencies started paying attention to the packaging of their entries so as to tell the stories in a compelling and convincing way. One hopes India will learn from its disappointment at Cannes Lions. As K.V. Sridhar, chief creative officer, SapientNitro India, says, “There will be years when we are at a low, but it is important that we take our learning and move on.” Echoes Rao: “Every year we must learn from the festival and go back inspired to produce better content for the advertising world.” Jury Musings The overall quality of work in the Cyber Lions category was very refreshing this year. We had a great jury that was keen to award not only fresh but also ideas that make a difference to the brand. My observation was that Asia per se, and not just India, could have done much better. For one thing, I did not see enough entries sent to the category from the region. It is a fact that there is a lot of good work that we are seeing out there, but agencies are not entering this in a platform like Cannes Lions. The cost of the entry could be one reason, but I would also urge agencies to be confident of the kind of work they are doing. Some of the work from the region is as good as what some of the more advanced markets are doing. As the digital landscape becomes more pronounced in a market like India, I look forward to a lot more coming from India. Indian creativity has a new canvas to paint in the form of digital, and I am convinced that the creative professionals will take up that opportunity.<table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Jasmin-Sohrabji-300.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 212px;"></td></tr><tr><td>Jasmin Sohrabji, CEO, Omnicom Media Group India & Southeast Asia, Juror, Media Lions</td></tr></tbody></table>Media is always an interesting category to judge in a festival that is predominantly about awarding creativity and great ideas. The clutter and competition in media today needs great ideas to differentiate work that will make a difference for brands. For agencies and advertising professionals, that is the ultimate prize — doing work that will benefit the brand. I was delighted to see some great quality work in Media Lions category this year. The judging process allowed us to spend time with the entries and give fair time to the work that was entered. There is an inherent challenge, at a platform like Cannes Lions, in judging creative work done for a business-driven, high-spending brand and organisations promoting social causes with the same parameters. That being said, I would put special attention on ideas that are scalable. The strength of an idea comes through when you can take it to a larger set of audience, and put it to different kinds of tests. The longevity of the idea also matters. Between a great creative spark seen in a one-off activity and an idea that is deeply rooted in insights and strategy, I would like to see more of the latter in Media Lions. That is what differentiates the work that will eventually stay on, and resonate with audiences in a manner that matters. Storytelling In Social Media Evan Spiegel, co-founder & CEO of social messaging app Snapchat, tells Noor Fathima Warsia why Snapchat is different from other social platforms. It is after what he describes as a ‘series of unfortunate incidents’ that Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snapchat, had the time to create a social platform that took a different view on how people profiled themselves, and of storytelling on social media. His venture prior to Snapchat, which was also in partnership with Bobby Murphy (co-founder, Snapchat) had failed. He was “thrown out” of his fraternity at Stanford, and he was recovering from a breakup of a three-year old relationship. “In the context of not-a-lot-to-do, this was when we began work on Snapchat,” Spiegel recalls. While still significantly behind social messaging players such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber and LINE in India, Snapchat has tried to differentiate itself in its product and growth strategy. The beginnings for the app were simple. The logo was hand drawn by Spiegel and the colour yellow was chosen because “none of the top 100 popular apps were yellow”. While the success of Snapchat is evidence enough of how the platform’s simplicity paid off, Spiegel believes that there were some fundamental areas of difference between Snapchat and other platforms. He says, “For me, the most important is restoring immediacy to conversations — which is not what social platforms have been about. The second, which even surprised us in the way it caught up, is our stories product. We started putting stories and videos in a chronological order and that really worked.”<table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Evan-Spiegel-Snapchat-lrg.jpg" style="width: 300px; height: 177px;"></td></tr><tr><td>EVAN SPIEGEL, Co-founder & CEO Snapchat</td></tr></tbody></table>In his view, prior to Snapchat, social media worked more as a repository. “It was ‘I am every experience I have ever had’. But for Snapchat, a person is a result of those experiences. Social platforms can grow at a rapid pace, and a profile is said to be a copy of the user but that changes. Our approach really targeted that,” he informs. Brands Are Not People Snapchat challenges the mindset that brands should behave like people on social media platforms in order to become a part of conversations. “The growth of social media has been about bringing products to people, and then jamming brands in that. Brands tend to have a certain identity and message. They change the way they express it, but they do not deviate much. This is not true for people. There is a fundamental difference. Brands should be friendly but they cannot behave like buddies,” Spiegel states. This was also the time that Snapchat began working on its stories product that essentially looked at different events from around the world and encouraged users to create a public story collection through their videos and images. “We believe that many different perspectives are better than any one. When you see an event from 10,000 perspectives, it has the depth of the event,” he explains. After the initial success of the product, Snapchat took more steps including hiring journalists to cover events competently. The platform follows an average 24-hours timeframe for its stories. According to Spiegel, Snapchat’s first focus is to ensure that it is getting its product right and is able to introduce improvisations to existing products and create new products that can help it better engage wi th people, and in the process with brands. Its strategy in India would be no different, but by the company’s own admission, it has significant ground to cover in this social media crazy market.    @NFWarsia (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 27-07-2015)