R for Rah Rah

At the end of five days of intense scrutiny and incessant discussions on every piece of film at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, the piece I am writing will appear well after the final award ceremony is over, which makes it possible for me to talk about the stellar performers.

One notable part of the show was the steep drop in the number of entries in both print and film. USA Today has reported a 25 per cent drop in the number of film entries and a 32 per cent drop in print entries, which are significant numbers even during the times we live in.

So while prying out the winners became that much easier, the discussions also got more intense as most of us were conscious of the fact that the last signal we could send out was that it was an easy to win metal. But the truth is that some categories will go unrewarded and some have just a couple of finalists, which is and should be a reflection of the times.

Anyway, back to the work. Volkswagen in Brazil had a delightfully imaginative spot called Dogfish, which illustrated the fact that anything you can imagine can fit into the car. It simply showed the life of a man and his pet, which just happens to be half dog and half fish. While it may sound like a typical piece of advertising exaggeration, the finesse with which the execution was handled and the calibre of the computer post work left one awestruck. It is the kind of execution that would put most Hollywood blockbusters a run for their money.

The Tasmanian beer film on the other hand followed classic advertising commercial rules and yet stood out for its simplicity and well-pitched level of exaggeration. Stella Artois may not cut through with the masses but it’s a superbly crafted series that touches a cord unerringly with its target audience driving home its now legendary Reassuringly Expensive position.

Then there was the Times of India’s Chennai film. Which, along with the very talented Senthil Kumar, was one of the last projects I was involved in during my days at JWT. It was such a different sounding and different looking piece in the crowd at the show that it immediately caught the eye on first viewing and always seemed to start a discussion. It will be great to hear that sound track played in front of such a multicultural audience that they look like they’ve walked out of a Benetton ad.

And finally, the Grand Prix (did we really win it last year?!) was the Philips cinema television ad. I am such a strong believer in the power of the human story that I had long given up hope that any piece of technique would ever move me. This film proved me wrong. It starts with a really strong concept but the executional technique is of such high order that most of us still can’t seem to figure out how they did it. Moreover it doubles up as a highly interactive piece as well which, to be honest, made it a pretty unanimous grand prix winner. Definitely a piece worth making every effort to find and see, so riveting is the storyline as well as the storytelling.

There are other commendable pieces in the show and all of them are probably worthy of much more than an award at an advertising festival. But to see them, you may have to get the Cannes winners disc.

But it feels great to see India topping its performance year on year and I personally am thrilled to see my Never Say Never Again pre-festival prediction so thoroughly vindicated. And I hope I can say that again next year.

(The author, popularly known as Aggie, is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Taproot India)