Cannes Lions 2025: Watch the campaigns that struck Gold for India

FCB India’s ‘Lucky Yatra’ campaign

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025 concludes today. During this landmark global festival, the creative lions from India announced their arrival on the global stage with roaring success. The Indian agencies brought home one Grand Prix and nine Golds, taking the total medal tally to 32 this year. Let’s explore the winning Grand Prix and Gold campaigns at this year’s Cannes Lions festival.

The best-performing campaign from India this year has been FCB India’s ‘Lucky Yatra’, which the agency crafted for The Indian Railways.

Besides winning a Grand Prix award under the PR category—India’s only Grand Prix this year—the campaign also won six Golds across various categories, including Brand Experience and Activation, Creative Business Transformation, Creative Commerce, Direct, Outdoor, and Local Brand.

The campaign depicts the story of an innovative experiment carried out by the Indian Railways to fight ticketless travel among Mumbai’s 75 lakh daily commuters by converting every train ticket into a lottery ticket each. Drawing on Indians’ annual spending of over $28 billion on lottery tickets, the campaign links each valid train ticket to a daily cash prize potential.

Rather than focusing on penalties for ticketless travel, Lucky Yatra shifts the narrative toward positive reinforcement and possibility. The campaign reframes tickets from mere fare payments into potential winning opportunities. The initiative was promoted through multiple channels, including outdoor advertising at railway stations, digital platforms, on-train messaging, and radio broadcasts to ensure maximum visibility among Mumbai’s commuters.

Award: Grand Prix

Category: PR

Agency: FCB India

Campaign: Lucky Yatra

Client: The Indian Railways

Ogilvy’s ‘Mission: Erase Valentine’s Day’ campaign

With a humorous take on the Valentine’s Day celebrations, Ogilvy’s ‘Mission: Erase Valentine’s Day’ campaign created for Cadbury’s 5 Star won the Gold award at Cannes Lions 2025.

The campaign shows a way to skip Valentine’s Day by creating a ‘time travel vessel’ that would erase February 14^th from participants’ timelines. The campaign features the legendary space scientist Nambi Narayanan to utilise time zones and chart a vessel that would avoid Valentine’s Day entirely.

The campaign shows three volunteers embarking on a mission to fast-forward through February 14^th, with the entire event being live-streamed from a control room in Mumbai. The campaign builds on the brand’s irreverent positioning that encourages people to ‘do nothing’ – a stark contrast to the pressure-filled expectations of Valentine’s Day.

Award: Gold

Category: Social and Creator

Agency: Ogilvy

Campaign: Mission: Erase Valentine’s Day

Client: Cadbury’s 5 Star

Leo India’s ‘Tailor Test’ campaign

Leo India achieved a Gold for its ‘Tailor Test’ campaign made for Acko. The campaign, released on the occasion of World Heart Day, leverages tailors’ expertise in body measurements to alert customers about potential heart health risks.

As per the World Health Organisation’s waist-to-hip ratio guidelines, if the waist-to-hip ratio exceeds 0.85 for women and 0.90 for men, individuals should consider a heart health check-up. Utilising these guidelines as a screening tool, tailors in the film are shown gently suggesting customers to go for heart check-ups whenever their waist or hip measurements exceed notified limits, thus turning routine fittings into potentially life-saving health prompts.

The campaign draws from ACKO’s health insurance data, which shows that heart disease claims have tripled among people aged 31-40, with the largest cardiac arrest claim reaching INR 1.10 crores. With this Gold, Leo became the only Indian agency to secure a win in the Creative Data category.

Award: Gold

Category: Creative Data

Agency: Leo

Campaign: Tailor’s test

Client: Acko

Havas India’s ‘Ink of Democracy’ campaign

Havas India secured Gold award for the ‘Ink of Democracy’ campaign it crafted for The Times of India in the Print and Publishing category.

The campaign aimed to address the issue of 33% of eligible voters not turning up to previous Lok Sabha elections in India due to laziness, lack of awareness, and political alienation, which unfortunately resulted in 7,500 litres of unused electoral ink. Created in partnership with the Election Commission of India, the campaign decided to turn this waste into a striking visual statement.

For the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, The Times of India and The Economic Times printed their pages entirely in purple ink instead of traditional black, using the same purple-coloured ink normally used to mark voters’ fingers to prevent duplicate voting. The mathematical precision was stark: for every 132 absent voters, one page was printed, totalling 22.80 lakh prints with a powerful appeal: Don’t waste a drop of electoral ink. Don’t waste the power of democracy.

Award: Gold

Category: Print and Publishing

Agency: Havas India

Campaign: Ink of Democracy

Client: The Times of India