A Tough Lion

The Indian agencies return from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2019 achieving 18 Lions, a drop from 21 metals compared to last year. This year, India bagged only one Gold metal and missed out on a Grand Prix

- Tasneem Limbdiwala

THE 66th edition of the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity has come to an end with Indian agencies bagging 18 Lions. This includes only one Gold, five Silvers, and 12 Bronze Lions. India did not win a Grand Prix this year, and also saw a dip from 21 medals won last year.

New Winners Make a Clean Sweep Again

In the previous years, India’s performance credited to a great show in the Health Lions and the Glass Lion categories. On the other hand, this year India secured just one Bronze Lion in each category.

This year, Dentsu Webchutney -- a digital agency – achieved the highest number of Lions and became the most-awarded agency network from the country. The agency returned with one Silver and five Bronze. This is a big achievement for Dentsu as for the first time a young digital agency has gained such momentum. This signifies the importance of the medium in the overall body of work that has been done and also shows the freshness of the ideas coming from an Indian digital agency at a global platform.

The second highlight of India’s performance at Cannes this year was the Gold win from FCB India — a global advertising agency network. This is the only Gold from India this year, and only Indian agency to celebrate on the stage at the Festival. Last year, it won first-ever Cannes Lion.

Globally, Omnicom -- an American global media, marketing, and corporate communications holding company -- bagged the Global Holding Company of the Year Award. For the consecutive second year, Omnicom displaced WPP for the award and maintained the streak that it started last year. However, WPP got some respite as its media agency, Mindshare, bagged the Media Network of the Year 2019 award.

Overall, the number of awards given to various countries have gone down substantially, giving the impression that this was one of the tougher years of jury decisions.