A short commercial break at Cannes

We are in almost the last phase of the 2010 Cannes advertising festival. Thursday and Fridays at Cannes are leisure days. There are no award shows. Most people go out to visit places close by, like Eze, Grasse and St Tropez. No such luck for me.

In the morning, the shortlists for the last three categories were announced. The news wasn’t so great for India. It scored a duck in Titanium and Integrated Lions and the Film Craft Lions categories. However, in the film lions categories, two agencies with five films have made it to the next round.

Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, always a strong contender when it comes to films, has three shortlists: One for Fevicol Moustache, and two films for Breakthrough’s (an NGO) Domestic Violence campaign. The films have been directed by my friend Baudhyan Mukherjee (Buddy) of Little Lamb Films (as I said, I need all the reflected glory I can get this year at Cannes). The Breakthrough campaign has been running for three years now. I have had the privilege of working on the first campaign and having introduced Buddy to both the agency, O&M, and the client, Sonali Khan.

The other agency which has a couple of contenders for the final night tomorrow is CreativeLand Asia with its two films for LMN, a lemon drink by Parle Agro. Shot by one of the most awarded directors in the world, Thanonchai,, who is from Thailand.

So far, India has 16 metals across categories. In cyber, film craft and integrated & titanium categories, India drew blank. The agencies which have won metals are Leo Burnett, Publicis, Taproot, Ogilvy, RMG and Creativeland Asia. For all the others, this year's Cannes has been forgettable.

Today, I couldn’t attend a number of the seminars or workshops. I had to get up early and attend the Publicis creative meeting at the Majestic Hotel, conducted by our global creative chief, Olivier Altman.

We took an overall view of the Publicis performance at Cannes this year and what we needed to do to improve it in the coming years. Globally, Publicis hadn’t done that great. One of the biggest contributors, Publicis Mojo, as Craig Davis confessed in the meeting, had a disappointing year at Cannes. I was glad to be an Indian: we were the only one of the two to contribute a gold to the network.

Then, after a very quick lunch with some colleagues, we rushed for the Maurice Levy conversation with P&G's Bob McDonald, chairman of the board. The reason I attended was not because he was from Publicis but he is a great speaker, with a great sense of humour.

Bob McDonald revealed that their purpose was to develop products that can improve the lives of their one billion consumers. Apparently, 548,0000 consumers are added every day. He further said innovation was at the heart of their strategy. It is this focus and drive that resulted in many innovative products. Including the first disposable diaper (thank you, P&G, a disposable diaper is one of the greatest inventions ever!)

He also talked about all the charitable projects P&G had taken up and said the philanthropy of today turns into loyalty of tomorrow. Maurice concluded the session by saying collaboration is the way forward in every field. Not competition. That’s all from here for the day. Do catch up tomorrow for final night at Cannes.

Emmanuel Upputuru National Creative Director, Publicis India