AD Agencies
MediaCom wins Media Network of the Year at Cannes Lions 2018
MUMBAI: MediaCom has been named Media Network of the year at the 2018 Cannes Lions Festival.
The agency’s work for Tesco in the UK landed the Grand Prix for Excellence in Media Planning, while campaigns for P&G’s Gillette in Israel added two Silver Lions and a Bronze Lion. The agency also received eight shortlist nominations, making MediaCom the most decorated media agency in the competition.
The Grand Prix campaign, Tesco’s Food Love Stories, enabled the retail giant to turn food shopping from a functional to an emotional purchase. While competitors focused on food provenance, Tesco used its first food campaign in three years to celebrate “the food you love to cook for the people you love”.
The message was spread via paid digital, out of home and radio, with data targeting ensuring the delivery of personalised stories to consumers. Owned media, including point-of-sale, recipe cards, email, print and digital helped spread the word.
The fully-integrated campaign delivered a 53 per cent improvement in quality scores, making Food Love Stories Tesco’s most effective campaign ever.
MediaCom worked with BBH London on the campaign with ITV Creative, Global Radio, Facebook and JCDecaux also providing production services.
MediaCom Israel picked up three Lions for its work with P&G’s Gillette. The Babyface campaign picked up a Silver Lion by encouraging new dads to build strong physical bonds with their children by shaving their scratchy beards, while I Don’t Roll on Shabbos grabbed both Silver and Bronze for enabling members of the country’s Orthodox community to buy and use deodorant on the Jewish day of rest. I Don’t Roll on Shabbos boosted Gillette’s share of the deodorant market from 3 per cent to 15 per cent.
“This is fantastic news, and I’m hugely proud of the UK team for winning the ultimate prize in our industry. Nor could I be happier for our client, Tesco, who worked in partnership with us to create this memorable campaign,“ said MediaCom Worldwide chairman and CEO Stephen Allan. “Tesco’s Food Love Stories combines great insight with fantastic business results and demonstrates how our Systems Thinking approach can help brands be both creative and effective in the way they invest their marketing budgets. I’m also thrilled by the geographical spread of our shortlisted work. From Vietnam to India, Australia to Belgium and Israel to Russia, we have ensured our clients get the same high quality of service in every market“.
The result maintains MediaCom’s dominance at global award ceremonies, as it was named Agency Network of the Year by Festival of Media Global earlier this year and topped the Gunn Media 100, published by WARC.
MediaCom is a member of WPP, the world’s largest marketing communications services group, and part of GroupM, WPP’s consolidated media investment management arm.
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
