With Cannes Lions festival kicking off on June 18, we look at how the current generation in Indian advertising is tapping into the Zeitgeist to deliver strong messages

The lure of Cannes Lions is the destination, says Mithila Saraf. At 25, this will be her third time at the annual festival (June 18-22), which honours creative ideas in ‘branded communications’ — her first two years, she was nominated for the Young Lions (for under-30s), from her agency, Famous Innovations, in Bengaluru. “I joke with friends that it’s an annual pilgrimage that the advertising industry from around the world makes,” she says. Of course, advertising has many international awards, of which the One Show and D&AD are also big. What is different about Cannes, she feels, is “the festival, and the fact that diversity and change has become a large part of the conversation. Technology, art, culture — things that don’t seem to be directly connected with advertising, are all a big part of it now.”

So what brings people like Saraf to Cannes? “A certain amount of talent, a huge amount of hard work, and a thick skin,” says Surjo Dutt, the National Creative Director of FCB Ulka, Delhi. He believes “commercial creativity”, an oxymoron to some, has become even more of a challenge than before, with the nature of the work itself changing, moving between 20-seconders for YouTube and mobile-friendly stills, and long-format corporate films that must hold attention in a serial-tasking world. So when we set out to find future creative leaders, we turned to industry mentors and bosses.

KV Sridhar, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Hyper Collective, Mumbai — universally (and appropriately called Pops) — helped us understand what qualities we needed to look for in these ‘modern day storytellers’: “People who understand that it’s a tight box they have to work in, those who get the medium and the limitation of length. Also, simple stories that are told well and that have high engagement. We are far more visual today, so those who can show rather than tell.”

Here are five creative people to track.

Jigar Fernandes, 38

President and Content Head, Culture Machine

It makes sense that Fernandes’ latest campaign for Sony Ten, targeting the ongoing football world cup in Russia, is called Meri Dusri Country — where Indians support teams across social media, telling personal tales, in a tournament where we do not feature at all. “People are taking out their phones and typing out their stories. That’s the kind of engagement it has brought about across social media,” he says. As a football player in college, he believed he would one day play for the state and then the country, until a ligament injury forced him into a job in sales and marketing. About six years into his career, Fernandes quit, to join Brand David. He has won a Cannes metal and a D&AD in 2013 for his Ambuja Cements campaign, with WWE’s Khali and a few others. He has also worked on Vodafone, Skoda, and the Akanksha Foundation campaigns. Advertising today, he feels, needs both right- and left-brain thinking, and there is no space for creative indulgences. While technology and various media may come and go, the fundamentals remain the same. “Today there is mobile, tomorrow there will be AI, these are just tools, but what you need is a good story to tell.”

Sakshi Choudhary, 32

Creative controller, Ogilvy, Mumbai

After doing her MBA and working as an innovation manager, Choudhary, who had always been drawn to advertising, did a course in MICA and took the creative leap. The campaigns she is proudest of are the ones that have started the conversation on social change. “The trend is for brands to jump into every conversation, every event. There’s a feeling that we must have a share of voice on that. But it’s important to identify the role the brand plays. The youth is driven to brands with purpose, and we need to approach advertising with that in mind,” she says. Her Reliance General Insurance’s #HoliNotHooliganism campaign and #LforLove for Love Matters have been the most inspiring. Around Holi this year, interactive posters were put up in colleges — when people scanned them with their phones, the colour stripped away to reveal the picture in another light. Similarly, when it was shared on WhatsApp, and people clicked on it, the picture of sexual harassment was shown. Choudhary is passionate about women creative leaders in advertising, and has been a part of the Cannes Lions ‘See It Be It’ mentorship programme for women in advertising and marketing last year. She is working towards changing advertising from a male-centric industry to one that is inclusive.

Indrasish Mukherjee, 31

Unit Creative Director, Lowe Lintas India, Bengaluru

Mukherjee is fresh from winning the Star Re.Imagine award for his Swiggy campaign. In the past, he has also been runner up in the Campaign Asia Young Achiever and was voted an Adobe Young Lantern. He joined the agency right out of college seven years ago as an intern and quickly escalated to creative director in just four years, working on projects like Paperboat, Tanishq, Britannia and Flipkart. He has seen things change over the years. “The shelf life of an ad nowadays is shorter than the time that goes into making it, which makes the solutions we provide a lot more short-lived. Also, rarely are large sums of money put away to back a single campaign. Instead, it’s distributed over a series of smaller creatives because, with the advent of digital, it’s anybody’s guess what will work and what won’t,” he says. Earlier, there was a system to building a brand, but today, brands resort to using multiple agencies to do their communication, sometimes resulting in a too-many-cooks situation. The upside: it is less competitive, as there is a lot of work to get done, and many more opportunities.

Hemant Shringy, 32

Executive Creative Director, BBDO, Mumbai

Shringy joined advertising straight from college (he did mass media because he wanted something that did not have maths!). Having worked with some of the industry’s biggest names (people, agencies and brands), he says he still approaches work with the “joy of not knowing, of not operating with the attitude that I can solve any problem”. This has helped him crack some of the biggest ideas. One was Ariel’s ‘Share the load’ campaign (left) — which explored social conditioning and highlighted how doing laundry is not just a woman’s job. Whisper’s ‘Touch the pickle’, Ebay’s ‘Things don’t judge’ (above), and Visa’s ‘Kindness is cashless’ are some of his other big projects. “It’s important to have sensitive, relevant conversations. There’s so much advertising and content thrown at consumers. So we ask, ‘Why am I going to pick a brand?’... because people today are looking for heroes and leaders, and brands have to be that,” he says. He has been named Creative Person of the Year, South Asia, by Campaign Brief Asia (2017); is ranked 13th most awarded ECD in the world by the Big Won report (2016); and has won at Cannes, One Show, D&AD, among others.

Amish Sabharwal, 31

Creative Head, Dentsu Creative Impact, Bengaluru

“I was supposed to be a doctor because both my parents were, but physics got to me,” says Sabharwal. On his mother’s advice, he did mass communication, and, in IIMC, copywriting became his thing. Sabharwal has launched several brands, giving them distinct identities: Shine.com, Gatorade, and soon, Ikea. The Times of India’s ‘Flirt with your city’ campaign has just been released, and the Max Healthcare poster has won him several Indian awards. He believes that the role of the agency itself is changing, though it will always be the custodian of the brand idea. “Today, it’s fragmented, diverse, and people are still trying to figure it out, because there are many content creators vying for people’s attention. We will need to understand 10 more mediums, go more low budget, and co-create, so that the idea thread is held together,” he says, in the context of social media influencers.

Power couples

Art and copy partners are like husband-wife relationships — endearing in their fights, with a deep understanding of each other’s craft.

Yash Modi, 26, and Omkar Rachha, 26; Mumbai

The duo (Modi is the writer and Rachha the art) from BBDO India will represent India at the Cannes Young Lions (print) this year. They are all about working in collaboration, hand-holding each other, and basically treating the entry like it was a college project (with lots of conversation, honesty and fun, sans the egos). Over the years they have together worked on Visa, Crompton, Glenmark and Racold campaigns.

Ashok Karkala, 32 and Vinay Pawaskar, 35; Mumbai

The duo from Ogilvy (Karkala is the art and Pawaskar the writer) has done campaigns like the Savlon Chalk Sticks concept, which won them everything from Cannes to D&AD. In an extension of the idea, they designed an ID ‘guard’ — an ID card with a sachet of handwash — as well as the #HaathSeBaat campaign that educated kids on E.coli and salmonella.

The ones that got away

Advertising rockstars who switched lanes

Sanket Avlani, 31, Mumbai

Creative Director, A Good Feeling; Curator, Taxi Fabric

As someone who runs a design studio that works with clients like Google, Snapchat and Asian Paints, Avlani credits advertising for his ability to identify and understand insights and observations in behaviour, but sees the industry as a springboard to the larger world of communication.

Why he gets the vote: “I find a lot of creative people are very often lost. Very few can think of ideas that are scalable and have a strong aesthetic. He has that and is also driven to do interesting things.”

— V Sunil, co-founder Motherland, Kochi Biennale, Jodhpur Urban Regeneration Project, Delhi

Ryan Mendonca, 33, Mumbai

Creative Head, Youth Entertainment, Viacom 18

Mendonca and his team “mainly create films (notoriously known as promos) for MTV and MTV Beats”. He says advertising gave him an understanding of “the beast we’ve come to know as ‘the idea’. I was fortunate to work at Ogilvy, which put me squarely in the middle of several brilliant minds, from whom I imbibed the passion to tell good stories.” The reason he left: to explore other mediums of storytelling.

Why he gets the vote: “His Bournvita ‘Tayyari jeet ki’ commercial dialogue was my ringtone for the longest. I like creative people who respect research and data. That is adulthood in my estimation. To be future-ready, creatives must be glad to jump into bed with data, analytics and insights. Ryan does that. With consummate finesse.”

— Swapan Seth, founder, Equus, Delhi