Cannes Lions: No show for India in Direct Lions

After  winning a Grand Prix in the Direct Lions category last year, its safe to assume that one expected to see a good performance from India in this category this time around as well. India, however, did not bag even a single metal this year in Direct, which was a big disappointment.

India had seven shortlists in the Direct category this year. BBC World Service was shortlisted for their campaign ‘Condom.’ Rediffusion Y&R was shortlisted for ‘Vandana’ for American India Foundation. Leo Burnett was shortlisted for Tide’s ‘Stainbroidery’ in the FMCG category while O&M’s shortlist was for Vodafone’s 'Mousepad.' Contract was shortlisted for ‘Donkey thrashes Tiger’ for Santuary Asia. McCann Erickson was shortlisted for ‘Let our paths cross’ for Bombay City Red Cross. JWT India’s 'Teach India ' campaign was another hopeful, havign been shortisted in the Best Integrated campaign led by Direct Marketing.

Reacting to why the sequel to the Lead India campaign did not make the cut this time around, Farrokh Madan, jury member on the Direct Lions category said that in the case of Teach India, the ‘what’ did not seem to convert into ‘how’ for the jury members. The jury had felt that the current campaign was too reminiscient of last year’s campaign and they had not felt convinced of the ‘innovation’ idea coming through.