As my stay comes to a close, the feelings about the trip is a bit mixed. The exposure to some good advertising work and some interesting sessions, apart from exploring the French Riviera were the positives. The inconsistency of the festival quality and low levels of networking would probably be the negatives, writes Ashok Venkatramani, CEO, Media Content Communication Services, exclusively for exchange4media.

Ashok Venkatramani Jun 24, 2010 5:02 PM

Malavika Sangghvi has been appointed as Head of India Bureau at the Edipresse Group, an international media group headquartered in Lausanne Switzerland. Sangghvi’s mandate is to supply news and information about the India luxury world to nine of the Asia Tatler titles across Asia.

exchange4media Staff Jun 24, 2010 9:08 AM

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (Mahanagar Seva Sadan) has invited bids from OOH companies for the construction of skywalks on a build-operate-transfer basis at various locations for the Bus Rapid Transit System in the city. The locations include those at Narol, Nehru Nagar, Jodhpur cross roads, Mani Nagar and places near Big Bazaar.

Pallavi Goorha Kashyup Jun 24, 2010 9:07 AM

Anil Kakar has put in his papers as Executive Creative Director at IBD India. Kakar has confirmed his move from IBD India, but did not divulge any details on his plans ahead. He has a career span of 17 years in the advertising industry.

Tasneem Limbdiwala Jun 24, 2010 9:06 AM

The most eagerly awaited session of the day was the Mark Zuckerberg session. He is the CEO of Facebook, and that is no small task. The queues outside the Palais had to be seen. Even the Grand audi, where the session was being simultaneously telecast, was packed. However, the session by itself was boring. He was too guarded, gave the usual answers, which revealed nothing. For a company that has 500 million users, surely the CEO should have been more upfront, writes Rahul Kishore.

Rahul Kishore Jun 24, 2010 9:04 AM

Listening to Jon Landau, the producer of ‘The Titanic’ and ‘Avatar’, was delightful to say the least. Another revelation for me was the concept of using on-line video competitions to enhance brand engagement, writes Pratap Bose, COO, Mudra Group and CEO, Mudra Max, in his blog exclusively for exchange4media.

Pratap Bose Jun 24, 2010 9:03 AM

The agency business model has been seeing changes for many years now, but the core of the model has not been impacted much. According to the R/GA team, it was time to rethink the agency model, and give another boost to the creative industry.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jun 24, 2010 9:02 AM

Microsoft is one of the key players in its space, but it knows there are areas where it has to catch up with the competition. There are times when it plays the underdog, when it plays the overdog, and when it just plays the game marketers play. Mich Mathews, Senior VP, Central Marketing Group, Microsoft, spoke on some of the advantages of being the underdog and also acting the overdog.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jun 24, 2010 9:01 AM

“Online or offline, don’t think about that. Everything is going to be online,” this was the suggestion of Henrique de Castro, Vice President, Global Media and Platforms, Google, to agencies (both creative and media) and advertisers during the first session of Day Four of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010.

Dhaleta Surender Kumar Jun 24, 2010 9:00 AM

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finds India to be an interesting market, which, though having very low Internet penetration in comparison to its population, has high mobile usage. Facebook in India has more mobile users as compared to web users. The company is working with developers to bring out apps that would work on mobiles in markets like India.

Dhaleta Surender Kumar Jun 24, 2010 8:59 AM

Though the numbers are for just one week, it has brought great cheer to the Star Plus camp. The channel led the Hindi GEC charts on week 25 with 443 GRPs (TAM, HSM, CS 4+). A part of it can be attributed to the Star Parivaar Awards, which was in its tenth year. New show ‘Tere Liye’ also managed to find its way to the top ten programmes of the week.

Khushboo Tanna Jun 24, 2010 8:58 AM

Design Lions is soon becoming a good category for India. India has won two Design Lions – Publicis has won a Gold Lion Campaign for the work done for Publicis Communications, while Ogilvy has won a Bronze Lion for the work done for Department of Posts. Jury Member Elsie Nanji, Managing Partner, Red Lion, stated that the work from India was good, and going forward, the effort should be to pay attention to all aspects of an entry.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jun 24, 2010 8:56 AM

The Press Lions jury called it the ‘return of writing’. The Press Lions results indicated that it was a good year for the category. India got two Golds – the first from the Festival so far, and four more metals, including two Silvers and two Bronzes. The Golds were awarded to RMG (from the JWT family) and TapRoot India. There were 12 Golds in all awarded in the category.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jun 24, 2010 8:55 AM

The Times of India party at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010 saw the Indian team celebrating 16 Lions. This was coupled with some discussions on what the Films and Integrated Lions categories would bring for India. Last year, the metal tally was double this by this time, but given the way the festival began, the 16 number too is looking good.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jun 24, 2010 8:54 AM

Coca Cola started planning its FIFA World Cup campaign almost four years ago. The key learnings from the entire planning and execution for the campaign were: no short-cuts to the big idea, collaboration makes everyone better, and only authenticity can be scaled. For Joseph V Tripodi, EVP, Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, The Coca Cola Company, ideas can come from anywhere, and Coca Cola works on the “open source” model, where anyone with a good idea is welcome.

Dhaleta Surender Kumar Jun 24, 2010 8:52 AM