Agencies need to strengthen cultural depth and context in award entries: BBDO's Hemant Shringy

Ever since Health and Pharma Lions were made a separate track altogether at Cannes Lions, India always won big laurels that included multiple Grand Prix and Gold Lions. However, no Health and Pharma shortlist this year put industry veterans in disbelief.

In the past, campaigns like McCann Worldgroup’s ‘Suraksha ka teeka’ and ‘Immunity Charm’ and Medulla Communications’ ‘Last Words’ fetched top accolades in the Health and Wellness category at Cannes Lions.

Hemant Shringy, Chief Creative Officer, BBDO India (Mumbai), who was representing India on the Health & Wellness jury, took a short walk on the Palais beach with BestMediaInfo Editor Akansha Srivastava and spoke about the judging process and why India could not even secure a shortlist in this category.

Shringy said, “India is making a great mark across categories. When it comes to Health Lions, there were very few entries from India, to begin with. The Indian entries didn’t make it to the final round of judging for shortlists.”

As per Shringy, Health and Wellness is almost like a whole show combined with the pharma category. He shared that there were more than 1,300 entries in the category and he was given 360 entries in the first round. After reaching Cannes, the jury members finally went through 171 pieces and shortlisted 128 campaigns, which didn’t include any entry from India.

“Out of 360 entries he was assigned, I came across only two entries from India, which I was hoping to make it to the second round of pre-judging. But in the second round of pre-judging, those two campaigns didn’t make it,” he commented.

“Film, outdoor, direct, radio and others have separate categories. But in Health & Wellness, all kinds of work is put together. Therefore, the process of judging the category is quite enriching,” said Shringy.

One of the trends that stood out for Shringy in the Health category was campaigns around safe sex for the elderly.

Explaining more about this trend, Shringy continued and said, “In a lot of markets, there is a notion that elderly people don’t need to use condoms as they would not get pregnant. But in reality, not using condoms doesn’t keep them away from spreading STIs (sexually transmitted infections). There were three different campaigns that had the same starting points, but different execution processes altogether.”

Shringy sounded very hopeful about India’s performance this year. “We have 43 shortlists already on day 1 and that’s a great start.”

For Shringy, another learning he gathered from the judging process is that if a campaign didn’t make it to the jury room, where a jury person from that country could push for that piece, which means that the entrant also needs to strengthen the cultural depth and context in the entries as well.

When asked about whether the Health and Wellness category has taken a back seat for agencies and brands in India, Shringy disagreed and said, “Hypothetically, if there are not many awards in the Innovation category, doesn’t mean people have stopped creating innovative work. There could be a lot of reasons for a campaign to not work in a subcategory. For example, an agency enters a wonderful campaign in a subcategory, but in that particular subcategory, there is even a greater piece.”

Cannes Lions introduced a capping of six categories into which agencies can enter. When asked if this could act as a deterrent in entering workpieces, Shringy said even with such a rule in place, India’s performance was historically well last year.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com