Awards are to celebrate, not critique: Cannes Lions juror Akshay Kapnadak

It is a consistent player at Cannes Lions, which brings home a metal or two every year but DDB Mudra has never managed to steal the thunder at the festival. In conversation with Marty O' Halloran, CEO, DDB Worldwide, who talks about the big challenge for Indian creative professionals to be 'world class'.

At a time when 60% of their workforce is pushing the data or digital agenda at DDB globally, the dilemma for the leadership is why it is perceived as a mainstream agency.

Watch the video to find out how Marty plans to rectify that.

FCB Kinnect - HDFC BANK

Vigil Aunty Indians are frugal with their money. Ironically, a survey indicated that 42% of Indians experienced financial fraud. Reason? There's no way to keep up with the growing ways to con people. PSA's get outdated soon, and by the time we learn to prevent one fraud, fraudsters introduce two new frauds. What people needed was a saviour who could stop them every time they acted dumb around their own money. But they won't listen if you choose conventional ways to educate them. So instead, we, India's largest private sector bank, created a character who entertained them as she spoke on how to avert frauds. The villain to every fraudster's story, the protector against all frauds and the torchbearer of 'Always Stay Vigil', Vigil Aunty is the first anti-fraud influencer ever. Using all social platforms, the latest trends and popular influencer and celebrity collaborations, she took on every opportunity to accomplish her only mission of freedom from frauds.

FCB Kinnect - Smart Bazaar

Campaign: Second Question Pujo, a centuries' old Indian festival, is celebrated by 104+ million people in India alone. The idols venerated in the celebrations are considered incomplete if made without the soil freely given by sex workers. While they're needed to make the idol sacred (with the soil given), they’re considered to be impure to attend the celebrations of the same idol. We highlighted this injustice. Every year sex workers are asked only one question - "May I have some soil?" This year the campaign provoked people to invite them by asking the second question - "Will you join us?"

FCB Kinnect - Google Cloud Campaign: Hum Banayenge

In 2022, India celebrated its 75th year of Independence. It marked the beginning of a national movement of self-reliant nation-building. Self-reliance a spirit that Google Cloud shares with its customers, i.e. Indian companies. And that's how we saw an opportunity for brand-building within a sentiment of nation-building. Through a series of films, we showed and continue to show the stories of the struggle and ingenuity of Indian entrepreneurs and how our brand is a proud partner in creating innovative and effective solutions. The community of founders and developers embraced this human side of a B2B brand with pride and warmth. Today, Google Cloud's perception as a leader has grown by 8%. Bringing us almost on par with the category leaders.

FCB India - Campaign: Hair and Her, UNTANGLING THE POLITICS OF HAIR

Since times immemorial, a woman’s hair has been intertwined with religion, culture, sexuality, and patriarchy, binding her to society’s rules. The protests in Iran highlighted this injustice bringing support from countries across the world, except India, that chose to remain silent. This campaign aims to raise a voice of support for the women of Iran by bringing their plight close to home and heart, awakening Indian women to the truth that Iran's issue is not Iran's alone, but every woman’s issue.

FCB Interface - Navneet Campaign - Tr. for Teacher

The Indian school education system is one of the largest in the world, with over 26 crore students and 95 lakh teachers.

However, these school teachers are severely undervalued, many working without contracts, with extremely low salaries and no health or maternity leave benefits.

Navneet Education Limited is India's largest textbook publisher. For the last 60 years, Navneet has been partnering with teachers to create content that helps students learn and perform better.

But this year, on Teacher's Day 2022, Navneet wanted to celebrate teachers and recognize their role in shaping the country. There are several highly valued professions in India, many of which are considered prestigious and offer significant financial rewards. These are professions like doctors, lawyers and engineers. And one thing all these professions have in common is a title prefixed to the name of the professional. These titles automatically call out the value and stature of the person who uses it.

Ironically, the profession that makes all these professions possible, teachers, didn't have a little. So, to bring value and recognition to teaching, Navneet decided to create an official little for teachers - Tr. for Teacher The campaign was launched on Teacher's Day, 5th September 2022, with a social experiment film.