THE LION HUNT

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High level of creativity. Low conversion rate of entries to wins. Missed jury slots... What’s right, what’s wrong and why adlanders should sit up and take notice before the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2016 begins

By Srabana Lahiri and Neeta Nair

The hunt is on! Adland is in a frenzy as all efforts are aimed at capturing ‘Lions’ and all roads lead to a particular ‘Palais’ in the south of France where the action is all set to begin on June 18. The 63rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is at hand, and creatives all around the world are on the prowl, ready to draw blood in the hope of grabbing some ‘Lions’, albeit gold, silver, bronze or glass ones. In all this, where does India stand? How good are our creative instincts, and what are our prospects of emerging victorious after the ‘hunt’?

THE CONVERSION CONUNDRUM

While the number of entries submitted from India has gone up steadily, the conversion rate to wins appears to be stagnant over the years. Looking back at 2015, on one hand India had reason to celebrate as BBDO brought home the country’s first Grand Prix at the inaugural Glass Lions, while on the other there was a substantial dip in the number of metals India won when compared to 2014. In fact, it was the lowest metal tally for Indian advertising in five years.

INDIA’s METALS @CANNES 2015

Says Nandan Srinath, Director Response at Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd. (official India representative of the Cannes Lions Festival), “Our entries to awards ratio is very poor per se. It’s been very poor. What is happening as a result is that the number of jurors we are being requested to nominate is dropping. For example, this year there is no Radio juror. We have had a Radio juror for as long as I can remember. And I asked the festival organizers why don’t we have a Radio juror slot... They said that India is winning very little in Radio, and therefore they have to reward countries that are getting metals rather than put people who are producing very little Radio work, or very little award-winning Radio work, on the jury. If this situation continues, one day you may lose other prominent categories too.”

Talking about why several shortlisted entries do not convert to wins at the global test of creativity, Saurabh Varma, CEO, Leo Burnett, South Asia says, “We are very inward-looking as a country with local award shows as our benchmark. So as a country, we have got to change our perspective to what works globally. If our benchmarks are not global, we are not going to be able to compete at a world level.” Varma is judging the Creative Effectiveness category at Cannes this year.

Out of the 40,133 entries received at Cannes last year, 1035 were from India, but we couldn’t manage even a shortlist in the booming Cyber and Mobile categories. Talking about where we are possibly going wrong, Ravi Deshpande, Founder and Chairman, Whyness who is judging the Cyber Lions this time says, “In India, we always arrive at our destination slowly but surely. We are not the most developed market in the world when it comes to digital communication. Yet, the quality of thinking is very good. Once we have powerful ideas and the craft and the execution to match, I am sure we would make it.”

The conversion rate is rather poor, but India sends more and more entries to Cannes each year, with renewed optimism. Santosh Padhi, Co-founder, Taproot Dentsu says, “India produces many good pieces of work, what we must also know is whether the international jury members including the Chinese, Japanese and Korean judges will understand those ideas. Just because of the immense respect for creative guys in the organization, the agencies send the entries without analysing their chances. As Indians, we are happy to apply chandan and sindoor on our entries and hope for the best. Years ago we were asked why we didn’t send to Cannes our Grand Effie winning campaign in India – ‘Pepsi, Change the Game’. We would have had to bank on at least one of the jurors being from the eight countries where cricket is played to get the cultural nuances in the lyrics. We can send ads on local cultural aspects but it will cut ice only if it is an issue which would be understood universally like the Reshma, the acid attack survivor ad.”

SHOULD Numbers MATTER?

There are those in the industry who think that the number of metals we win at Cannes is not indicative of our industry’s creativity. Sandipan Bhattacharya, CCO, Grey Group India says, “I think we did well last year, we won a Grand Prix after more than five years. If India wins 60 bronze metals this year, would you remember any of those? You wouldn’t. If you win one Grand Prix or 10 golds, you will remember those. So, I think it’s not the quantity; it’s the colour and the size of the metal that matters more.”

Today, the jury members have less time to evaluate each entry. Around five years ago, the length of the audio for each entry was about five minutes, today it is down to two, which means the agency needs to pack in more in less time. And each entry needs to hold the judges’ attention from the word go, else there are high chances of it being lost in the sea of entries at Cannes. Many jury members believe that’s where Indian entries have a disadvantage.

Ramesh Iyengar, CMD, Select Direct Marketing Communications says, “Imagine an entry with Hollywood style production, camera work, helicopter shots, great music and VO. In two minutes your competition is telling you why that piece of work is fantastic. And then you have a board with 100 words on what is the objective, 100 words on the strategy and 100 words on the creative with some visuals. What will create more impact? Big boys like Ogilvy and BBDO understand that to stand out on the world stage, they will have to make a video with good quality production. But these few agencies don’t contribute to 80% of those 1,000 odd entries sent each year.”

According to Swati Bhattacharya, Chief Creative Officer, FCB Ulka, “We really have to work on our presentation videos. They are terrible most times. Also, we have to get out of the habit of saying, ‘In India women love their sons,’ in India we do this and that. It is undoubtedly something that has worked for us earlier, but we have overdone it now. If we can go back to story-telling without underlining India, we will do better. A story of a woman in a drought condition would be the same in India or in Somalia, or wherever. You don’t have to constantly plug it with the ‘India’ angle. The point is to look at how big calamities like drought can affect a woman’s life.”

“If we stop looking at it as ‘winning’, and start looking at it as ‘sharing’, we will change the way we talk. In winning, we tend to be self-driven, internally focused and assuming a lot of things. When we talk about sharing, we think about the other person, we think about all the people around the world, and how to get everyone to understand what’s going on. And that changes the way you present. It also gets received in a far more selfless way by the other person.”

Josy Paul,

Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, BBDO India

MISSING JURY SLOTS

How many jury slots a country gets each year is determined by the success of that country in winning Lions in the previous years, cross-referenced against the number of entries made by that country. All judges must be award-winning and representative of countries that are entering the Cannes Lions. Like last year, this year 13 jurors are representing India at Cannes. But some top award categories which have Indian names missing from the jury list are Digital Craft, Mobile, Product Design, Promo & Activation, Radio, Titanium and Integrated Lions, Creative Data, Pharma, Innovation, etc.

Valerie Pinto, CEO, Weber Shandwick who is judging the PR Lions at her very first Cannes outing as a judge says, “India is a very important market from the growth and behavioural change perspective. There are lots of issues which need to be addressed and sorted out. The campaigns that have traditionally won from India have always been about a social issue like hygiene or gender sensitivity issue like Share the Load. From a creativity point of view, India really ranks high and our ads are more creative than those that come out of Korea, Japan or some of the other markets in the East.”

Despite our shortcomings, there have been several campaigns from India which have made the world sit up and take note, be it Nike India's first ever crowd-sourced and digital-led campaign ‘Make every Yard count’ which went on to win eight Cannes metals, TOI’s Lead India campaign which won a Grand Prix at Cannes in 2008, Taproot’s farmer suicides which made India proud by winning four Golds and HUL’s Kan Khajura Tesan which won three Gold Lions and a Bronze Lion at Cannes in 2014, further going on to win a Creative Effectiveness Lion the year after. Then in 2015, BBDO India brought glory to India with a Grand Prix and a Glass Lion.

The Cannes Lions Global Creativity Index 2015 may have seen India dropping six places to rank 18th from the 12th position in 2014, but that’s no reason for the Indian ad industry to let out a muffled roar at Cannes another year in a row.

“Indian creative professionals need to have a better handle on what will excite the award festival juries in a really genuine and really inspiring way. Part of the reason for our low conversion rate could be the Indian layer, part of it may not be so. We need a more objective assessment of whether a piece of work will make the cut or not.”

Pradyumna Chauhan,

National Creative Director, McCann WorldGroup

“In India, we have tremendous film production capabilities, so I don’t see any reason why our entries can’t be sparkling. Technically they are perfect, almost. But usually, we don’t go the full distance, even if our work is edgy, our entries are not as sparkling.”

Ramesh Iyengar,

CMD, Select Direct Marketing Communications