Cannes '13: Hear the collective hum

STORY 1
Last two days I didn't give a jot about advertising.

Who won? Who didn't win? What won ? What didn't win?

My head didn't go there. And my heart had no space for it.

I was holed up in the apartment with raging fever …wanting to be back home with my mother and my daughters.

Today is different.

I am up and about.

I am healthy enough to be back in love with advertising.

STORY 2
Last night, right under my apartment, I saw this girl, who some hours before was shrieking with joy about her metal win, bawling into the phone.

From the little smattering of French I know.

I realised that her heart was being broken by some crummy boyfriend far far away as she just sat there bawling…I was wondering whether I should yell out to her.."Hey! Didn't you win earlier today"……And there lies my little stumble-upon moment.

A jury can only decide the colour of your metal.

Not the colour of your day.

For us to be happy inside the Palais, it helps to be happy in life.

And that's why this morning when I went in, my eyeballs weren't going JWT, JWT!!! Or to be more specific JWT India! JWT India!

I was going there as someone who loves stories more than Hugh Hefner loves bunnies.

Any the story I liked I wanted to make it mine.

We do it with songs all the time.

Why not with ads?

So, what totally made my day was to see my favourite 'Dumb Ways to Die' as a print finalist.

It's simplicity disarms you.. making you want to cuddle the campaign like a child.

So when this wins tonight, I'm going to definitely guzzle a gallon of rose wine in celebration.

Then I saw some totally fantastic print work from Thailand. Totally teekha! Totally to the point.

There are these beautiful portraits of old people sitting in isolation, with a foreign pawing hand over their bodies, saying. It never goes away...So tonight if this wins I'm not going to care if I'm not from Bangkok, Leo Burnett. I'm going to scream my lungs out for them. There is another brilliant ad from Happy Brands, Brussels. It says don't text and die. Simply told and beautifully executed. The JWT Doha campaign for Amnesty International that says every signature makes it harder is a lovely campaign too.

Closer home, there are lots of pieces of work that I'm totally over the moon about. Taproot's 'Hang Me Again' ad on farmer suicides. It has already won two golds in outdoor and has been shorlisted for press, too.

Shortlisted entries from O&M include the LED torch campaign for Philips and my favourite one for the 'Adopt a Dog' programme. The visuals show a dog tugging a girl away from a noose, a man away from a building terrace. Again very simple and very moving. Another of my desi favourites is Leo Burnett's Tide campaign for Procter & Gamble. The visuals shows two young bullies spotted from head to toe in a bad ink fight, standing in front of the principal in blindingly white stain-free shirts! Funny, isn't it? Grey's work for P&G's Duracell batteries is also quite a contender for tonight.

With so, so many of my favourites doing the rounds…my happiness quotient for the evening is already guaranteed.

Cannes can't just be about I, me, mine.

If you've taken the trouble to come here...you have to hear the collective hum.

The pursuit for perfection from any part of the world is your pursuit, too.

When somebody else's story becomes your own..it's your story too.

So, lets celebrate our people and I mean the human race.

Apparently, Paloma Picasso ( yes, Pablo Picasso's daughter and a designer herself) once wrote a thank-you note to French designer Yves St Laurent.

She wrote to him saying "Thank you Yves, thank you for making me more Paloma. Thank you for making me more dramatic. Thank you for making me more Spanish." She ended her note by saying thank you for making me more.

So, thank you, Cannes.

You have in three days made me more by giving me a billion stories to choose from

Some that I found.

And some that found me. (The author is national creative director - JWT India)