Cannes Contenders 2019: DDB Mudra Group

Royal Challenge Sports Drink- #ChallengeAccepted

 

On one hand, nothing unites as cricket does. Even more so in the IPL, where even nationalities are forgotten. But when it comes to gender equality, nothing discriminates like cricket. 

 

Despite notching individual and team accomplishments, women’s cricket in India still enjoys less patronage than some of the other sports. They get paid a fraction of what their male counterparts do, play to almost empty stadiums and don’t have anything close to the cash-rich IPL to help groom the future.

 

Being a brand that believes in challenging stereotypes, Royal Challenge Sports Drink wanted to give a platform to this conversation with #ChallengeAccepted. 

 

With a call for the world’s first mixed-gender T-20 game.

 

The campaign not only challenges the misconceptions around women’s cricket and women cricketers; but has also provoked many conversations that could trigger a game-changing shift in the culture of the sport.

 

There are already 1,000,000 pledges to watch the mixed-gender game and a 91% positive sentiment towards a campaign that challenges the gentleman’s game.

 

Stayfree India- Project Free Period

 

Most women hate their periods. It’s inconvenient, it’s painful and it restricts their everyday. Even more so in India. Here, women on their period are considered impure and not allowed into temples or even their own kitchens. The list goes on and on. It’s all of this that continues to drag the topic of periods deeper into the dark corners of society. 

 

But for one community of women, periods are a welcome break. These are the women in the sex trade. While periods, for them, come with the same set of biological inconveniences, they actually look forward to it. Because it is the only time of the month where they are not forced to work. 

 

This was the insight that inspired us to partner with Stayfree India and NGO Prerana, to initiate #ProjectFreePeriod in 2018. A vocational training program, which converted three days of periods or non- working days for women in the sex trade into three days of learning. 

 

Since 2018, we have taken #ProjectFreePeriod to various commercial sex trade districts across the country and have partnered with NGOs and volunteers to arrange vocational training workshops imparting economically sustainable skills; compressed into three-day modules. So that women of the sex trade can use their period days to skill themselves in another trade.  

 

Since its initiation on International Women’s Day in 2018, #ProjectFreePeriod has been able to convert more than 100,000 period days into days of learning and has reached out to more than 11,000 women in the sex trade to help them with their dreams of progress, one period at a time.

 

McDonald’s #MakeYourChoice

 

The urban youth sees Election Day more as a holiday declared by the respective states. And considering McDonald’s is a place where a lot of urban India hangs out, especially on holidays, there were high chances that many of our 119 million visitors were considering giving up their vote.

 

This election, we decided to use our restaurant as a medium to shift the perception of Lovin’ the ‘holiday’ to Lovin’ the Election day. 

 

We started by helping our customers realize what they actually give up when they give up their vote. So, we picked the most popular McDonald’s in the first city to go to vote; took the common and everyday act of ordering and changed it a bit.

 

If the customer didn’t have the election-ink on their finger, we took away their right to choose. No matter what they ordered, we chose what they’d have.

 

The message:

 

You lose your right to choose, when you don’t vote.

#MakeYourChoice

 

We started with provoking, but then nudged them in every way to get to a booth.

Directions to the nearest booth were given; at the store and in our delivery-app. Real-time polling updates given were using their favorite McDonald’s orders. And we celebrated those who voted with special offers and through a digital wall-of-fame at the restaurant. 

 

Khalsa Aid - Hashtags Don’t Heal

 

 

 

 

 

Khalsa Aid is a UK-based NGO that aims to provide humanitarian aid in civil conflict zones and disaster areas around the world. 

 

We live in troubled times, and you see these troubles and crises populate our social media in the form of hashtags. But hashtags do little more than provoke debates and conversations. 

 

“Hashtags don’t heal” seeks to move readers from arm-chair activism to making a real difference to the lives of the affected; by supporting the efforts of Khalsa Aid, through donations.

 

The campaign uses actual pictures from Syrian war-inflicted areas and the message itself is strung together with actual hashtags used around the issue.