MAM
Cannes Lions Day 2: A Gold for Dentsu Creative, Byju’s & DDB Mudra win 2 Silvers
Mumbai: The Indian contingent carried forward its winning act into Day two, clinching three more Lions- a Gold and two Silvers, taking its metal tally to 10. Vice Media’s ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ created by Dentsu Webchutney (now Dentsu Creative) added one more feather to its cap by winning a Gold Lion in the Digital Craft category under the Personalised Storytelling & Experience subcategory.
DDB Mudra picked up a Silver for ‘A Silent Frown’ – a book on the untold story of Charlie Chaplin – created for the Charlie Chaplin Foundation in the Industry Craft category under the Print & Publishing subcategory.
The second silver came for BYJUS in the Entertainment Lions category under the Talent: Film, Series & Audio subcategory for its ‘Master Ji’ campaign created in-house by the brand and produced by Dora Digs Mumbai.
Cannes Lions announced its second day of winners in the Industry Craft Lions, Digital Craft Lions, Film Craft Lions, Design Lions, Entertainment Lions, Entertainment Lions For Music and Entertainment Lions for Sport categories in a live awards show in Cannes, France.
Furthermore, India’s shortlist tally increased to 57 with 20 additional shortlists across Brand Experience & Activation (10), Creative Business Transformation (1), Creative Commerce (4), Mobile (4), and Creative Effectiveness (1).
Reacting to the Gold win, Dentsu Creative CEO India Amit Wadhwa said, “It has been a fantabulous Day 2 at Cannes Lions. After an exciting start with a Grand Prix, 1 Silver, and 2 Bronze, we are ecstatic to add a Gold to our kitty. This is indeed a mesmerising experience. A big, big thank you to all our ex and present teammates for making this happen. It has indeed been a breathtaking miracle. Also, my deepest gratitude to everyone who has held their faith in our teams and work. Thank you!”
Dentsu Creative group chief creative officer India Ajay Gahlaut added, “After the Grand Prix yesterday, the Gold today comes as yet another validation of the quality of the Unfiltered History Tour campaign. Winning against fantastic campaigns from around the world is a great feeling. While we are extremely grateful for the recognition that our campaign has received so far at the Cannes Lions, we are hungry for more!”
Byju’s vice president –Brand and Creative Strategy Vineet Singh said on the win, “It’s a proud milestone for us at BYJU’S. The ‘Master Ji’ campaign is a testament to BYJU’S belief in creating and driving meaningful messaging to connect with its audience. We are extremely grateful for everyone who supported us in achieving this dream run and kudos to our brilliant in-house team for ideating and executing the film so beautifully.”
Sharing his thoughts, DDB Mudra Group chief creative officer Rahul Mathew said, “A Silent Frown is a tribute to the man who regaled us all with his craft. And to be awarded for the craft of the book is quite poetic.”
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
