Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar, Chief Creative Officer, Rediffusion Y&R, who already has three Cannes under his belt, bluntly refuses to give the haloed status to winning a Cannes Lion. “It’s certainly not a career defining moment,” he says. Incidentally, when Sagar was felicitated at Cannes the first time around, he was merely an Art Director. Today, he proudly wears the hat of Chief Creative Officer at Rediffusion Y&R. But, Sagar says that it was only post his transfer to Mumbai that his career zoomed. “So my career defining moment came when I was offered the coveted transfer from O&M Bangalore to O&M Mumbai.” That was the first time Sagar came face to face with his idol Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman, India and South Asia, O&M. At that meeting, Piyush asked him whether he (Sagar) was a batsman or a bowler. Sagar replied that he is an “opening batsman” and a delighted Piyush gave him the nod to relocate to Mumbai.
Oh! And winning at Cannes seems to have become still another of those proud moments for Sagar, even as he just bagged a bronze for his Airtel campaign at the 2009 awards!
Take Rajiv Rao, now Executive Creative Director, O&M, South Asia, who has picked up three of these precious metals till date. He walked the red carpet for the first time in 2002 for his work on Cancer Patients Aids Association and collected two golds for the same. But the work, which he feels gave his career maximum momentum, was the one he did for telecom brand Orange in Mumbai and which never even made it to the Cannes shortlist. “The work that we were doing for Orange was mainly outdoor and the communication helped the brand to become Mumbai’s most loved brand,” explains Rajiv. It is this equity, created by Rao & team, that prompted Hutch to retain the Orange brand in Mumbai, even as elsewhere in the country, the brand was changed from Essar to Hutch. The latest feather in his cap has been the most-talked-about Zoozoos campaign for Vodafone. Interestingly, even Hutch’s pug and Vodafone’s Zoozoos have not managed to impress the jury at Cannes!
The Cannes saga has been a little different for ad-man Emanuel Upputuru though. Emanuel has bagged three Cannes Lions till date (the most recent being a Bronze Media Lion in 2009 for the Let ‘Gandhi Talk’ campaign). It was in 2004 that Emanuel (then Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi) bagged the award for his work on Sony Handycam. Two years later, when he was felicitated again, he was still a Creative Director, this time with O&M. Clearly, winning a Cannes Lion did not add much to his profile, at least in terms of designation. “My goal is to be incharge of an agency that is the coolest and hottest to work for. Designations don’t really matter to me,” exclaims Emanuel, presently in a cushy position in the industry as the National Creative Director, Publicis India.
Look carefully and you realise that winning awards is a different high, yet what works better in pushing your career graph is an opportunity to work on big-ticket brand names. You only have to glance across at the Who’s Who of ad-land to see the rewards that consistent “brilliant work on great brands” have reaped for the likes of Piyush Pandey (Bajaj, Fevicol), Prasoon Joshi (Coca Cola, Happydent) and even R. Balakrishnan aka Balki (Idea Cellular. Tata Tea Jaago Re). Preeti N. Chaturvedi (Surf Excel), K.V. Sridhar (RCOM, Thums Up) and more recently Rajiv Rao (Hutch, Vodafone) who are treading a similar path.
Ask Amit Akali, Group Creative Director, O&M Bangalore. He believes that while “a Cannes metal does add weight to your profile,” it’s the portfolio of work that counts. He reasons that the work he has done for ITC’s snack brand Bingo has been in many ways more satisfying (for him personally) than the creatives that helped him win at Cannes. Agrees Nandini Dias, Chief Operating Officer, Lodestar Universal (she and her team recently won a Cannes Bronze for Tata Nano). “Working shoulder to shoulder with the client to achieve a marketing goal is always more satisfying than winning an award,” she says, adding that these days instead of agencies, it is the clients that more often crave awards.
Echoes Sagar, “More than winning the award, I think walking that red carpet along with Piyush Pandey, Pushpinder Singh and Dan Wieden was the most defining Cannes moment for me.” Even Rajiv Rao grins as he adds, “more than the work (for Cancer Patients Aids Association) that got me my first Cannes, I remember screaming Bharat Mata Ki Jai with fellow ad men post the victory.” Joono Simons, Exec. Creative Director, South, Mudra (whose tally at Cannes runs into one gold, a couple of silvers and four nominations till date) believes that more than anything else, a Cannes metal boosts the morale of any agency. “I believe that my role as a play maker should now produce more winners and thereby multiply the success many fold.”
Oh sure, the kind of instant gratification that winning at Cannes can bring is unmatched. But as the Lions become more ubiquitous in India’s ad-land – a far cry from the days when India was not even invited for entries – their pre-eminence in the overall scheme of things is fast decreasing. An international award – that too the most prestigious in the business – may count a lot for first time winners at the vibrant festival. But for old-timers in the industry, it’s the day to day that counts more, quite apart from the quality of work and of course the brands that you have in your kitty. This does not mean that the gutter bar at Cannes is not cool. In fact, it’s still the only place that India’s ad-land forgets its rivalries and in a rare show of fraternity sings the jana gana mana in unison, even creating minor roadblocks. After all, the numbers at Cannes are swelling, both of Indian delegates as also of winning entries!
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