Dream Slate Pictures takes Kellogg’s Ivory Coast campaign to Cannes Lions 2026

NEW DELHI: An independent creative studio in Delhi has pulled off something that most agencies would have quietly declined: building an entirely new food category in a market where the product had almost no cultural foothold, and doing it well enough to earn a Cannes Lions 2026 entry.

Dream Slate Pictures, the creative agency, production house and AI-powered content studio led by filmmaker Kushaal Chawla, has submitted its Kellogg’s Nouilles campaign for Ivory Coast in the Creative Commerce category at Cannes Lions 2026. The brief was as blunt as they come: introduce noodles to a market where consumers did not recognise them as a distinct food category and frequently mistook them for pasta.

The campaign combined television, digital, influencer activations, retail engagement, roadshows and AI-powered content production. The results were hard to argue with. Sales tripled within months of launch. An independent Usage and Attitude study conducted by PKM Africa Services found that the share of consumers preparing noodles incorrectly collapsed from 67 per cent in 2024 to just 2 per cent by November 2025. Some 40 per cent of current noodle consumers in the market entered the category during the campaign period. Brand loyalty reached 96.8 per cent.

The campaign was developed for Kellogg’s through its regional partner Mplify IVC.

Chawla, executive director of Dream Slate Pictures, was characteristically direct about what the entry represents. “When Kellogg’s gave us a brief to create a food category from scratch in the Ivory Coast, most people would have called it impossible,” he said. “We called it an opportunity. The result was a movement that tripled sales, emptied shelves, and made children across West Africa repeat our campaign line like it was their own.” He added: “This Cannes Lions entry is not a milestone. It is a declaration. The next generation of creative agency is here. It is AI-powered. And it is Indian.”

Aashish Rastogi, director general of Kellogg’s at Mplify IVC, pointed to the campaign’s emotional resonance as its real measure of success. “When children sing along, smile, and carry that feeling with them, it reflects exactly what we set out to deliver: something quick, comforting, and deeply memorable — just like the product itself,” he said.

Dream Slate Pictures has spent four decades building a body of work across advertising, branded content, feature films and television for clients including LG Electronics, UNESCO, HP, Nando’s, Krafton/BGMI and Spotify. Its Hollywood film Another Time, written and directed by Chawla, is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. The studio is also developing a feature biopic on Dr Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman IPS officer, written and to be directed by Chawla.

An Indian studio, an African market, an AI-powered campaign, and a shot at Cannes. Not bad for a brief most agencies would have passed on.