Cannes Lions: Ashish Khazanchi’s blog

56 years into this edition of Cannes lions and you wonder if all the ideas in the world have been done in some way already. Is there nothing that one can see on the boards here that doesn’t somewhat look like something that has been done before?

You would have to take a look at some of the work showcased and awarded here to realise that big ideas may just have come back into fashion.
Only this time, the playground may have shifted. It may no longer be the familiar two dimensional space.

Campaigns like the Queensland Tourism’s ‘The best job in the world’ or the ‘Trillion dollar billboard’ and ‘The musical road’ are brilliant solutions to marketing ideas.

For all these, there still is the good old print and film being used, the manner may have changed. The press for Queensland campaign is all of 5cm X 5cm, and in B&W and heavens forbid, has bullet points. The point is not so much about the craft as it is about what it makes people do.

A thrift travel portal (Zuji.com) starts making and commercially distributing cheaper baked beans, for helping people save some cents which go a long way in making their holidays possible in Zuji.

A town makes grooves on the road so that when a car travels on it at 45 kmph, the road plays ‘Scarborough fair’. At higher speeds, it turns into cacophony.

That then really is the big idea, in an age when in traditional media all possible techniques and spectacles have been done already.

These are ideas solving real problems and are coming from understanding human motivations, not from the last year’s annual.

These are exciting times. The big ideas are making a comeback and this time around, they are not in a cleverly crafted headline or in a wicked visual. They are all in the most unusual places where we’ve never looked before.