Cannes Contenders: Ogilvy & Mather India
In the lead up to next month’s Cannes Lions Festival, Campaign Brief Asia will be showcasing work from some of Asia’s top agencies that we hope will impress the judges…
Ogilvy & Mather India
There was a time when the Indian political space was filled with giants such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Today, over 60 years later, the idealism and integrity that built the country has given way to a Parliament that is wracked by corruption, frequent disruptions and violent behaviour. This has given rise to a deep disenchantment among the youth who increasingly question whether their leaders are fit to lead. In one of the most provocative commercials to come out of India, The Hindu, one of India’s oldest newspapers, held up a mirror to politicians and their behaviour in Parliament. The commercial became the country’s most watched video in just 4 days. And a 134-year-old newspaper became the voice of a new India.
Ogilvy & Mather India
Lifebuoy is the world’s No. 1 germ protection soap with a vision to improve the health and hygiene of a billion people. Handwashing with soap has been cited as one of the most cost-effective interventions to prevent diarrheal related deaths and disease. It has the potential to significantly reduce incidents of stomach infections and respiratory problems. A common transmission route for infection causing germs is transference from infected hands to the stomach through food. While many people know that one should wash hands with soap before having a meal, not many people really practice this habit. Given the fact that Indians primarily use their hands to eat their food, this becomes even more of a concern. The Maha Kumbh Mela is a massive festival of faith, conducted over 25 days and visited by over 100 million people, who come here to pray together, live together and eat together. Many of the Kumbh attendees are from small towns and rural areas. Lifebuoy India saw this as the perfect opportunity to reach out to a large group of ordinarily inaccessible sections of society and to get our message across.
Ogilvy & Mather India
At one of Mumbai’s popular malls, a unique store popped up ‘THE FREE STORE’ where everything on display was for FREE! Going on the insight that people will always try to pick up free things, Fevicol glued down decorative wooden items on all sides of the store unit. Then waited. Hoards of eager shoppers tried their luck; most, not giving up until it was revealed that Fevicol was behind the activity. Fevicol not only gave them a great experience, but also a token of appreciation for their effort. Ultimately, Fevicol got to directly demonstrate its product benefit, as not a single item was taken from ‘THE FREE STORE’; thus reinforcing their position as India’s most reliable glue.
Ogilvy & Mather India
Lenovo ThinkPads are widely used in offices. However, a lot of corporate executives were unaware about its spill-resistant feature. So we found a unique way to demonstrate this unique feature. In spite of their busy schedules these executives visit tea stalls for their mini-breaks at least thrice a day. For a day, across Mumbai, these stalls served tea on Lenovo ThinkPads instead of their regular aluminum trays.
Ogilvy & Mather India
Akanksha, an NGO, provides free education to over 4,000 underprivileged children in Mumbai. They do not get enough volunteers to teach, as people feel they need to be ‘qualified’ to teach these kids. So we took the classroom to the people and gave them a first-hand experience of the simple joy of teaching. On 5th September, as India celebrated Teacher’s Day, hundreds of kids from Akanksha went out looking for their teachers. Armed with a blackboard and a few benches, they set up classrooms across Mumbai – at the airport, malls, promenades and other public places. A simple message on the blackboard, “Will you be our teacher?” invited people to come forward and teach.
Ogilvy & Mather India
In India, we welcome people with colours. So to welcome tourists into the State of Madhya Pradesh, we have taken colours as a metaphor. And made all the main tourist attractions of tigers, erotic sculptures, palaces and religious monuments out of colour that the locals are throwing at the tourists. While most of it is visually evident, the song rendered in folk Indian music, describes the tourist attractions in greater detail.
Ogilvy & Mather India
Medical research shows that children are far more susceptible than adults to damage caused by second-hand smoke. The HCG print campaign targets smoker parents and illustrates this simple truth in a deliberately dark and compelling visual style. Each smoker parent, as depicted in the communication, is shown exhaling the cigarette smoke through the mouths of their children.
Ogilvy & Mather India
IBM believes in using science and technology to enhance their clients’ business and to improve society and the world. The poster campaign used inspiring, real life examples of IBMers who had created solutions that actually solved business problems and improved society. The stories were captured in an attractive pictorial style with embedded QR codes, and picked up the One Show Merit Award for Design, 2013.
Philips LED Torch ‘Alley’, ‘Forest’, ‘Gorge’
Ogilvy & Mather India
(Also see below) We had to create communication for Philips led torch – highlighting the fact that its white-light was brighter and better than that thrown by torches with regular bulbs. We started with the simple thought that the light from our product was as good as daylight. We discussed ideas where we would show night scenes [which had bats, owls, watchman, candlelight, etc], but shot in full day light and signoff with the thought – that’s what our torch light could do! It looked fine but there was only one problem – while the light was there in the ads, our product, the torch was missing from the picture completely. So we said, what if we had a beam of light coming out of our product in the middle of the ad? When we put that on paper, it literally changed our perspective about how the ad should be! And the difference we must say, was as stark as night and day!
WWF – Animal Trees ‘Bear’, ‘Hippo’, ‘Panda’
Ogilvy & Mather India
Trees and wildlife both need each other to survive. WWF wanted to convey this as part of their message about protecting the environment. We found a simple graphic solution by making trees look like endangered animals (panda, hippo and bear).
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1 Comment
Some good ideas in this lot. Not sure there are any gold lions but you never know with cannes.