Cannes Lions 2015: Raj Kamble’s blog: ‘If he were alive today, Shakespeare would be five times bigger than Zuckerberg'

This year at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, I’m happy and unhappy at the same time. Happy because the first Grand Prix for Glass Lions is for a campaign that is absolutely rooted to Indian society. Well done to BBDO India. All this life I’ve been hearing that Indian agencies don’t participate, because they feel the jury won’t understand Indian nuances. Here’s a proof that if the idea is good, culture or boundary will never be a hindrance. 

 

One more reason for my happiness is that none of the case studies are about Indian poverty, nor are their opening lines about the population of India. 

 

A lot of the work I saw this year are about brands doing responsible work. Last year it was about the pop-up store and 3D glasses. This year it is about emotional stories.

 

I’m upset from an Indian perspective because I miss the drive of winning at Cannes that we saw a few years ago. Everybody is busy with acquisitions, new ventures and decoding what the **** Cyber is. I don’t see the pressure on network agencies to win awards. The economy is growing five time faster than the global economy, and all the big networks can see the numbers. But, I can see them ignoring the award numbers.

 

Yesterday, I attended an outstanding seminar and they were talking about how Shakespeare managed to build his ‘company’ against big competition like bull-killing, human fights and adult entertainment. He not only wrote content and produced it, but created a global theatre in London, which was a platform. When the world was changing, they invented the sewing machine and hand clocks. He changed the content according to what was going on around him. It was amazing to find that one of his shows, called Shoe Makers Holidays, he (re)wrote 16 times, looking at people’s reactions. He was an amazing writer, actor, producer, innovator, planner and he wasn’t bad with research too. If today he was alive, he’d be five times bigger than Mark Zuckerberg.

 

- Raj Kamble is founder and CCO of Famous Innovations, India

 

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