India's Best Bets at Cannes Lions 2017: JWT India and Leo Burnett India

In the run-up to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2017, we take a look at some of India’s Best Bets at Cannes Lions 2017. Over the coming week, we will list some of the entries from India. Today our focus is on two of India’s leading creative agencies – J Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett India – both of which have pushed the envelope further with their creativity and innovation.

JWT India broke stereotypes with its movement ‘My Daughter Will’ to ensure that every woman in India has a legal right to perform her parent’s last rites while Leo Burnett India partnered with HP Lubricants to create the world’s first anti-collision vehicle management system, to make India’s national highways safer.

J. Walter Thompson India

Brand: Red Cross Society

The Indian Red Cross Society launched the World’s First Savings Account for Blood through the Blood Banking app – an app that enables people to save their own blood, just the way they’d save money in a bank. Hugely successful for the Red Cross and Rotary International, it achieved the Guinness World Record for the highest amount of blood collected in a day. With an average of more than 1,000 downloads every day and over 250,000 units of blood collected in the last one year, Blood Banking has been invited to enter the Effectiveness Lions category at Cannes Lions 2017.

https://www.jwt.com/en/work/bloodbanking

Brand: The Hindu

The idea ‘Tale of Two Cities’ was meant to awaken the readers of The Hindu, by demonstrating the two sides of Bangalore, one blessed by mother nature and other a portrait of human devastation. The agency ignited a social conversation with two interactive parallel play films, made from thousands of reader generated posts, mobile phone portraits, Instagram landscapes and WhatsApp video posts, showing the evergreen potential across various landmarks in the city. It led to 89.5 million impressions on Twitter and is being entered in Mobile, Cyber and Film categories.

http://www.spiritofbengaluru.com/sob.html

Brand: Haiyya (Delhi based NGO)

According to the Hindu religion, a woman cannot perform the last rites of her deceased parents. Only a man can do that – usually the eldest son. In cases where parents have only daughters, the closest male relative from the paternal side performs the last rites. This tradition has been a cause of sorrow for both parents as well as daughters. Hence, the agency started a movement, ‘My Daughter Will’, to ensure that every woman in India has a legal right to perform her parent’s last rites. It has been entered in Glass, PR, Promo and activation categories.

Agency Talk: “Our Global Creative Council led by Matt Eastwood and India Creative Council – my core team has pushed real hard on the quality of our creative product and we are seeing a visible difference in all the work coming out of J .Walter Thompson. We have chosen to exhibit our best work across all our eight offices in South Asia, but selected only the top 10 ideas for our annual Olympics and Oscars of Advertising: The Cannes Lions 2017. Here is our Top 3 for the Festival of Ideas. And may the best ideas win.” – Senthil Kumar, CCO, J. Walter Thompson

Leo Burnett India

Brand: HP Lubricants

HP Lubricants and Leo Burnett India have innovated with #RoadsThatHonk, the world’s first anti-collision vehicle management system, to make India’s national highways safer. It adopts SmartLife poles at sharp curves and hairpin bends, the first such set is installed on NH1 along the Jammu-Srinagar Highway, and employs advanced networked devices and combines wireless technology, radar systems, and an anti-collision warning system, powered by solar PV modules. The poles are placed on each side of key hairpin bends; they detect speeds of oncoming vehicles, then communicate with each other to caution approaching vehicles on either side with a horn.

Brand: Tata Capital

A significant section of the population does not have access to organized credit for no fault of their own. Leo Burnett India has co-created a financial product that democratises the loan approval process with just the power of Facebook likes! With this, they have done away with a vicious cycle plaguing India’s ‘unloanables’: people with no credit scores unable to apply for a loan, and the same people not receiving a loan because of no credit scores. ‘Salaam Loans’, thus, attempts to fulfil dreams.

Brand: Bajaj V

Bajaj V’s Invincible Indians is a platform where stories of ordinary people and their selfless service to society evoke pride every day. This is Bajaj V’s way of giving back, and making it slightly easier for everyday heroes to serve selflessly. With the legendary Vikrant’s metal running in the V’s veins and invoking a sense of pride, to identifying Invincible Indians, the agency along with the brand is now creating custom-designed products to empower everyday heroes. This is just over a year post the launch of the Bajaj V bike.

Brand: Fortis Healthcare

India just has 0.34 donors per million Indians, a disappointing statistic to say the least.

Fortis Healthcare saw an opportunity to make a positive difference to the wellbeing of the nation and spread much-needed awareness, unveiling a campaign ‘#MoreToGive’. War veterans, especially those who had sacrificed their limbs for the nation, came forward to pledge their organs. When even the ones who had been through so much had more to give to others, what excuse can the common man have?

Agency Talk: “Almost all of Leo Burnett India’s work speaks a new, different language of communication. All four pieces of work we have entered for Cannes Lions 2017 - #RoadsThatHonk, Salaam Loans, #MoreToGive and Invincible Indians, come from a place of Humankind. Each integrated campaign goes on to either help save lives or make people’s lives better. As creative partners, we aim to positively impact human lives and I believe that this work has achieved that goal in more ways than one.” – Raj Deepak Das, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett, South Asia

Disclaimer: The agencies have not been placed in any particular order. Many agencies missing from this list did not want to share information about their top entries.

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