Some more familiar faces from ‘back home’ have been spotted on June 20 at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2007. Prasoon Joshi is here finally, and some of the others seen include O&M’s Abhijit Awasthi, Renzel D’Souza, Leo Burnett’s James Mani, Kunal Mhabdi, and Russell Barett, who were intermingling with their counterparts of Rediffusion DY&R, Everest Brand Solutions and McCann Erickson like KP, Anto Noval, Vijay Lalwani and others (even sharing cell phones in cases where international roaming is either not activated, or already deactivated).

Many Indians were seen in the corridors of the Palais des Festivals but they were just watching India’s performance from a distance and even as the Indian creatives are a tad upset on not bagging a Gold yet, these NRIs think that India is doing quite well.

Some of the people we ran into were Nikhilesh Brahma, Marketing Director, P&G, and Sonal Dabral, Chairman and ECD, O&M, from Singapore. There was Roopesh Bhatnagar, GM, NPA, and Ashok Suvarna from the same organisation coming from the Oman. From the UAE, there was Raman Nair from Western Union.

When asked, most stated that they were enjoying the advertising industry of their respective markets but had an eye open on what India was doing. Suvarna said, “We are happy with every win that we hear and we are just wishing them luck and success.”