India had a great run at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2022, with a total of 47 metals. Now in 2023, Campaign India aims to lead the charge from this region by showcasing all of India's entries to the festival through our 'Cannes Contenders' series.
This is based on the premise that Cannes jurors don’t get enough time to scrutinise and deliberate a piece of work they haven’t really come across before. This series is a way of acquainting them with the good work from India and South Asia before their judging stint.
Mindshare has six such entries:
Dove Thumbstopping Beauty Biases – Using AI to make human interactions more humane
For Indian women, the conditioning to become "suitable brides" starts very young; perpetuating beauty stereotypes that can severely impact their self-esteem when it's still fragile. A Dove study discovered that 80% of school going girls in India face the beauty test every day, one that grades them on the aspects of their appearance through casual body shaming.
With Indian kids being the youngest to reach mobile maturity worldwide, these beauty tests have found their way into the online conversations they have with friends, family and followers.
To tackle this growing social evil, Dove built a real-time moment of truth on the very medium used to body shame young girls online – Smartphone Keyboards. The brand partnered with Bobble AI, India’s most popular smart keyboard app with 76+Million users across all types of smartphones, to create an innovative intervention at the moment of truth. Using their contextual AI capabilities and predictive text technology, it could catch users typing body-shaming comments, sensitise them on the impact of their words and educate them to build beauty confidence in young girls.
With up to 18% reduction in use of body shaming keywords in just 1 month, this unique intervention reminded millions of users that beauty comes in all forms, Thumbstopping Beauty Biases one conversation at a time.
HUL Shikhar – Sales Rep of the Year
In India, B2B sales go beyond invoices and transactions – it’s an art of relationship management. However, with the world moving towards automation, this human relationship was fading away.
In this evolving ecosystem, Hindustan Unilever Limited's B2B app – Shikhar, is an app enabling their partners (retailers, wholesalers and most importantly pharmacists) to buy smarter and go digital. But even with 100k+ registered stores, the app remained largely dormant.
While Shikhar was already a robust commerce platform for pharmacists, they still couldn’t transition their ordering processes entirely to the app because of their established ease with sales reps.
Desiring to add the dimension of a human sales rep to Shikhar led to the creation of Shikhar Super Chat – a live commerce innovation designed to develop pharmacists’ knowledge of Unilever's nutrition portfolio, engage in real-time two-way interactions, and receive personalized offers.
Kwality Walls Trixy Cinegame – Bringing Alive 3 Layers of Fun
Movie Intermissions in India are a 10-minute break smack in the middle of the movie, filled with on screen commercials playing in a loop. Kwality Walls Trixy decided to drive direct engagement during an otherwise irritating disruption that usually has audiences leave the theatre.
The brand decided to tap into movies, gaming and eating out, three big 'gen Z' passions. Trixy identified Cinema Multiplexes as the best consumer touchpoint and introduced ‘Trixy CineGame’ a mobile multiplayer gaming format.
‘Trixy CineGame’ a mobile multiplayer gaming format developed for 70 mm cinema screens. The format allowed 20 gamers to play simultaneously using their mobile phones as controllers.
A custom game was developed featuring Trixy Blueberry Cheesecake Land bringing alive the three layers of Cookie Crumble, Creamy Cheese and Blueberry Sauce as virtual fantasy environments.
Vim: Breaking stereotypes in kitchen and in tech
In India, the burden of chores, like dishwashing, falls only on to a women’s shoulder, by default.
Vim, India’s leading dishwash brand believes that dishwashing is not only a women’s job. So, when the brand launched Vim Black, a parody dishwash liquid for men, it stirred conversations around gender inequity in the kitchen and took the internet by storm.
Men were doing everything but dishwashing, so Vim took dishwashing to everything else that they were doing! The brand hacked the male ecosystem and normalised the role of men in the kitchen. From TV, and print to digital, audio and influencer content, Vim carefully picked each medium with a higher male base and contextually dished out its quirky messages.
Like dishwashing, there was another area that promoted gender bias. Another role that only a woman played by default – The Voice Assistant. Vim created the first male voice skill that tackled all dishwashing issues. By simply saying, “Alexa, Activate Vim Black” or “Ok Google, Talk to Vim Black” men got quirky tips and dishwashing hacks by none other than the OG macho man, Milind Soman. Vim struck two chords in a single stroke and challenged stereotypes in the kitchen and in technology. With the development of a male voice skill, Vim de-genderised dishwashing and ensured that men didn’t turn to women for dishwashing related queries.
Despite dishwashing being a low involvement category, Vim Black managed to get everyone talking about a chore and question an age-old stereotype that prevails in most Indian households.
Cric Exchange – Net Practice for Stock Trading
Upstox is a discount broker and a young entrant in the online stock trading category. While a common Indian understands what stock-market is, it’s difficult for him to understand trading; due to complex data and process understanding.
In 2020 we developed Upstox Cric Index, which simplified the understanding of stock trading.
Insight: To better understand the game, one needs to ‘play’ the game.
We had to go a step further to nudge the common man to understand the logic of ‘trading’. Moving the needle from ‘theoretical’ to ‘practical’ - a mock trade using cricket as a platform and ‘players as stocks’.
In 2023 Cric Exchange was born: Specially designed to experience trading and investing first-hand, through the lens of cricket. In three easy steps, Cric Exchange gave the people to power to;
1. Build and own a team to learn about portfolio creation
2. Buy/sell players to understand the art of portfolio management
3. Analyse individual players’ and team performance to learn how an individual stock impacts a portfolio’s overall P&L
A unique world of trading where one could practice and learn the basics of buying and selling through UPruns. UPruns is a virtual currency used to practice at the exchange, mimicking the trading world. Cric Exchange was created as a unique gamified engagement setup that helped users experience the nuances of a trading exchange via cricket; a collaboration between data analytics expert - Sportz Interactive, gaming partner - Nodwin, cricket authority - BCCI and official broadcaster - Disney+Hotstar.
- Hijacked entire IPL live and Pre-post segment
- Became the official rating system and conversation point for commentators during IPL
- Created strong consideration by awarding ‘Most valuable asset’ award to players
Castrol Super Mechanic: Upskilling during downtime
Mechanics, the most important decision-maker for engine oil purchase, are the driving force of decision making for end consumers. But, as per a survey, 8/10 mechanics feel unhappy and disrespected in their choice of profession. With no formal training, lack of knowledge and options, these mechanics lead a life of anonymity and feel that they don't get the respect and dignity they deserve.
In this new era of ever-changing technology in cars and bikes, mechanics face a huge challenge with upskilling themselves. As a brand, Castrol wanted to help them become more future fit with the changing times so that they could come back post the pandemic with greater knowledge and proud of the profession they are in.
Castrol Super Mechanic was a revolutionary journey as a commitment to upskill, reward and recognise the mechanic community of India through a one of a kind ‘phygital initiative’ which engaged with 1,41,000 mechanics remotely through their mobile phones. A seven-month upskilling programme built in partnership with a government recognised organization for skill development, we built this platform themed around #SeekhengeJeetengeBadhenge (learning, winning and moving forward).
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