It's A Win-Win @ Cannes

Lion of St Mark for Piyush and Prasoon Pandey, Grand Prix in Creative Effectiveness for Ogilvy India, Grand Prix for Good (Health) for TBWA\India and Gold Lions for FCB India and McCann Worldgroup make it a big win year for India, despite the metal tally being 21

- Naziya Alvi Rahman & Venkata Susmita Biswas

After an all-time high haul of 40 metals in 2017, India won 21 metals at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2018 last week, bringing the accent on quality of wins over quantity, topped by an hitherto unprecedented win – that of admen Piyush and Prasoon Pandey being crowned with the highest accolade in creativity, the Lion of St Mark award. For this reason, the year 2018 will go down in the history of Indian advertising as an extraordinary year.

Throughout the festival, Indian agencies bagged two Grand Prix awards – Ogilvy India won a Grand Prix in the Creative Effectiveness category for ITC’s Savlon Healthy Hands Chalk Sticks and TBWAIndia won a Grand Prix for Good (Health) for its Blink to Speak campaign for Asha Ek Hope Foundation. India also continued its winning streak in the Glass Lions category, with Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions – won respectively by FCB India for Sindoor Khela ‘No Conditions Apply’ (for Times of India), Cheil WW India for Samsung Technical School - Seema Nagar (for Samsung India Electronics) and BBDO India for #StandByToughMoms (for All Out from SC Johnson) - keeping up the tradition of winning Glass Lions every year since the category was introduced in 2015. McCann Worldgroup won a Gold Lion and a Silver in the newly introduced Creative e-commerce category for the Sweet Change campaign created for Paytm e-wallet.