The curtain fell on the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025 yesterday, marking a strong showing by Indian agencies. Besides a Grand Prix and nine Gold medals, the agencies in India also bagged nine Silver medals at the festival. Let’s examine the campaigns that brought home Silver for India this year.
BBDO India won a Silver Lion in the Sustainable Development Goals category for its ‘Share The Load’ campaign crafted for Ariel. The campaign addresses gender inequality in Indian households by questioning why laundry is often seen as solely a woman’s responsibility. Launched in 2015 by BBDO India and P&G, the campaign reframes laundry as a shared task between partners and family members, using emotional storytelling and cultural insight to drive the message home. Each edition of the campaign focuses on a specific dimension of domestic inequality, such as fathers setting examples for sons, or the mental burden women carry in unequal relationships. Rather than preaching change, #ShareTheLoad uses real-life scenarios to highlight how everyday actions can reinforce or challenge gender roles. The campaign combines the narrative with data, such as 71% of women reporting sleep loss due to unequal household duties. It invites men to actively share household chores and shifts the conversation from responsibility to fairness.
Category: Sustainable Development Goals
Agency: BBDO India
Campaign: ‘#ShareTheLoad’
Client: Ariel
India’s Leo Burnett bagged a Silver in the Media category for its ‘Takeoff Takeover’ campaign created for Cathay Pacific. The campaign uses real-time flight data to deliver targeted messages to air travellers in Mumbai and Delhi. Created by Leo Burnett India, the campaign appears on digital billboards along Mumbai’s Western Express Highway and on Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS) at Indira Gandhi International Airport. The messaging is timed to coincide with the departure of competitor flights, with tailored content displayed based on live flight information. These messages highlight Cathay Pacific’s routes and services, aiming to reach travellers during moments of high attention before boarding.
Category: Media
Agency: Leo Burnett
Campaign: Takeoff Takeover
Client: Cathay Pacific
Besides a Gold award in the PR category, FCB India also won a Silver award for its Lucky Yatra campaign made for the Indian Railways in the same category. The campaign tells the story of an innovative initiative by Indian Railways to tackle ticketless travel among Mumbai’s 7.5 million daily commuters by turning every valid train ticket into a potential lottery entry. Tapping into the nation’s annual lottery spending of over \$28 billion, the idea connects legitimate ticket purchases with the chance to win daily cash prizes. Instead of highlighting penalties for fare evasion, *Lucky Yatra* adopts a positive approach, using reward-based motivation to encourage compliance. By reimagining train tickets as opportunities to win, the campaign shifts the perception of fare payment. The initiative was promoted across a variety of channels—including outdoor media at railway stations, digital platforms, train interiors, and radio—ensuring widespread visibility among Mumbai’s travelling public.
Category: PR
Agency: FCB India
Campaign: Lucky Yatra
Client: Indian Railways
India’s VML secured a Silver Lion in the Music category for its campaign, ‘The Girl Who Played The Tutari', it created for Coke Studio Bharat. The campaign features a musician girl Nilaksha Borhade, who became India's first woman to publicly play the Tutari, a traditional Maharashtrian instrument historically restricted to men. Created by VML India for The Coca-Cola Company, the campaign highlights her performance in the music video Bayo, challenging long-standing gender norms. The campaign was distributed across digital platforms, radio, events, and social media. Following its release, there was an 18% rise in online videos of women playing the Tutari. The campaign received a Silver at the 2025 Clio Awards and was shortlisted at Spikes Asia.
Category: Music
Agency: VML
Campaign: The Girl Who Played The Tutari
Client: Coke Studio Bharat
Lowe Lintas won a Silver Lion for its ‘Dawai Reader’ campaign for Alkem Laboratories under the Pharma category. The campaign features an AI-powered tool that translates handwritten medical prescriptions into clear, local-language instructions for patients in rural and remote areas. Designed to improve health literacy where pharmacist access is limited, the tool processes scanned prescriptions and outputs simplified guidance in regional languages. Developed with Lowe Lintas and Doceree, the campaign aims to address a common gap in Indian healthcare: patients’ inability to understand complex or illegible prescriptions with the help of AI.
Category: Pharma
Agency: Lowe Lintas
Campaign: Dawai Reader
Client: Alkem Laboratories
In the Entertainment category, the agency from India, Talented, won a Silver award for its campaign, ‘Avani’s Gold’ created for the client, Britannia Marie Gold. Britannia Marie Gold’s Avani’s Gold campaign features a special-edition biscuit modelled on Paralympian Avani Lekhara’s gold-medal-winning shooting target. The biscuit matches the exact size of the target and includes markings showing the location of her winning shots. Released alongside redesigned packaging featuring Lekhara’s image, the campaign aimed to celebrate her achievement and promote greater awareness of shooting sports. The limited-edition packs were made available on Swiggy Instamart in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.
Category: Entertainment
Agency: Talented
Campaign: Avani’s Gold
Client: Britannia Marie Gold
FCB Kinnect bagged the Silver award under the Outdoor category for the campaign, ‘Too Yumm to Cheer’ it created for Too Yumm. The campaign features large, edible chips printed with match-day slogans in edible ink, created for cricket fans during India’s major tournament. The campaign addressed a ban on snacks being sold inside stadiums by providing a snack that doubled as a cheering prop. The signs were distributed in stadiums in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, enabling fans to wave them in support of teams and then eat them. Once consumed, the remaining slogans revealed the brand name 'Too Yumm!' integrating product placement into the live cheer experience.
Category: Outdoor
Agency: FCB Kinnect
Campaign: Too Yumm to Cheer
Client: Too Yumm
Under the Health & Wellness category, Godrej Creative Lab grabbed a Silver award for the ‘Naga Saint Eye Test’ campaign it made for Eyebetes Foundation. The campaign used Naga saints as living vision charts to screen for diabetes‑induced blindness during Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 in Prayagraj. Devanagari letters were painted on their bare backs; pilgrims unable to read the letters were referred to free eye camps run by the Eyebetes Foundation. The on-ground campaign took place at the Triveni Sangam site, aiming to reach large numbers of people gathered for the religious festival. It aimed to address India's diabetes‑related vision loss, citing that nearly 10 crore people live with diabetes and over 60% remain undiagnosed, making early detection crucial.
Category: Health & Wellness
Agency: Godrej Creative Lab
Campaign: Naga Saint Eye Test
Client: Eyebetes Foundation
The Outdoor category also saw India’s Talented win its second Silver award for the campaign ‘Nature Shapes’ it created for Britannia. The campaign features outdoor billboards that physically conform to the contours of nearby trees. The cut‑out displays were installed in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Meerut, and Pune and manufactured on cotton‑based biodegradable material. The message behind the campaign is that the brand adapts to nature rather than opposing it. Trees effectively shape the typography and artwork on each billboard, resulting in lettering that peaks, curves or adjusts to fit natural forms. The installation process included scouting suitable tree sites, mapping silhouettes, and designing boards to accommodate each tree’s growth. Almost half of the shortlisted locations were discarded due to pruning before launch. The campaign also released an open‑source manual that offers site‑selection advice, design guidance and mounting techniques to help other advertisers replicate the approach.
Category: Outdoor
Agency: Talented
Campaign: Nature Shapes
Client: Britannia
.jpg&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
.jpg&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
.jpg&h=334&w=500&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
.jpg&h=268&w=401&q=100&v=20250320&c=1)
