VML, FCB Kinnect Take Home Silver Lions For PR

HDFC Bank's ‘Lulumelon Eoss’ campaign by FCB Connect and VML's work for Coca-Cola's ‘Singh to Remember’ campaign have won a Silver Lion each, in PR.

On the win, Dheeraj Sinha, Group CEO of FCB Group India & South Asia says, “This is a great vindication of our vision that we want to do great work for our clients. The HDFC Bank campaign is running for three years in a new-age category. It is so hard to win anything at Cannes. 

For me, the most exciting part was the real work that everyone saw. We want to do more of this.”

Ravi Santhanam, Group Head and CMO, HDFC Bank further adds, "We're delighted to be amongst the winners at the industry’s most prestigious awards, Cannes Lions.

Along with our partners at FCB Kinnect, we’re proud to have created the innovative ‘Lulumelon- End of Scam Sale’ campaign for digital fraud awareness, subtly leveraging the concept of optimism bias. We stand proud to come up with and take forward this impactful campaign for fraud prevention."

On VML's win, its Chief Creative Officer Mukund Olety expresses, “It feels amazing to be recognised for a piece of work that has created a dent in culture. There are billions of people grooving to Khalasi and now we are as well holding two big metal lions in hand. In PR, it’s a Gold considering there were no Golds given in the category. This is for the team that is putting in the hours and doing some amazing work on the brand. This is for our clients at The Coca-Cola Company who dream big, push hard and make epic things happen.”

The PR Lions were chaired by Kat Thomas, Founder & Global Chief Creative Officer, One Green Bean Global. From India, we had Nitin Mantri, Regional Executive Managing Director (APAC), WE Communications, and Group CEO, Avian WE APAC on the shortlisting board.

The PR Lions this year has witnessed a refresh that ensures the award accurately reflects the current PR industry and celebrates work that delivers a brand message, changes behaviour or engages customers at scale

The PR Lions celebrate the craft of strategic and creative communication. The work demonstrates how original thinking, transformative insight and a strategy rooted in earned media have influenced opinion and driven progress and change in business, society or culture. The work has storytelling at its core and establishes, protects and enhances the reputation and business of an organisation or brand.

Under the Engagement track, India failed to make a cut in Media Lions, Social & Influencer Lions, Direct Lions and Creative B2B Lions.

Soumya Sehgal Bhutani

BW Reporters Soumya is the Senior Editorial Lead at BW Marketing World. She extensively writes on the Indian media, marketing and advertising ecosystem in India.