India at Cannes: DDB Mudra Group

The agency has shared four entries for this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity kicks off on 17 June 2024. Manifest's coverage for the festival continues with its 'India at Cannes' series. This series will showcase all of India's entries to this year's festival, speakers giving a sneak peek of their talks, and those attending the festival sharing expectations.

In this piece, we showcase DDB Mudra's entries for this year's festival. The agency has shared four entries.

Disney Star - Words of Pride

Disney Star has 700 spoken and 22 major regional languages. However, for over 125 million LGBTQIA+ individuals, there were no known words of respect—only words of disrespect were prevalent. Content often perpetuated these negative terms. Disney Star aimed to introduce India to respectful words for the community, integrating them into everyday vocabulary.

Disney Star curated "Words of Pride," a glossary of respectful terms for addressing India’s LGBTQIA+ community. An accessible website with pronunciations and contextual examples was created to make Indian languages more inclusive. This effort involved 150 linguists, experts, queer groups, and allies who invested 30 months of research and 7000 hours of collaboration. They delved into historical and contemporary texts, uncovering over 246 respectful words in 7 regional languages.

The campaign demonstrated that Indian languages have always been inclusive, but people were unaware of the respectful terms. It was time to unlearn words of hate and learn "Words of Pride." Audiences viewed over 560 million minutes of WOP-inspired content. The initiative sparked conversations with cultural influencers like authors, lyricists, and advertisers at notable platforms such as the Jaipur LitFest and the Advertising Standards Council of India. The campaign achieved 92% positive sentiment, garnered over 94.5 million video views, and generated over 285,000 engagements.

McDonald’s India - EatQual Colours

"When it comes to food, we eat with our eyes first."

Food paints us a picture, and it is this picture that triggers cravings and builds anticipation. This is why visual representation is one of the most important parts of the customer journey when it comes to food. However, for the approximately 70 million colour-blind individuals in India, this magic diminishes. Picture juicy red tomatoes, traditionally associated with deliciousness, losing their lustre and appearing as dull grey. The excitement vanishes. We believe that choosing food should not be a guessing game and that everyone should enjoy the delightful excitement and promise of a McDonald’s meal.

As we continue to expand our efforts with EatQual, we widened the lens on the McDonald’s experience to tackle an inequity that is often invisible. We know that the magic of a McDonald’s meal starts well before you take the first bite. But for a large section of the population with colour blindness, that experience was a muted one. We were dedicated to making the ordering process visually appealing for everyone. This is how we developed McDelivery into the first colour-blind-friendly delivery app in India, introducing the 'Colour-Blind Friendly' technology feature and launching it on the World Sight Day, October 12, 2023. The feature helps users select from three colour enhancement options that allow colour-blind people (people with colour deficiency disorder) to see the real colour of their food and drinks. All the McDonald’s commercials on YouTube now come with the option to be viewed as per one’s colour blindness. We enhanced the in-store experience to ensure that all our touchpoints reiterated our commitment to inclusivity.

Within six months, the colour-blind friendly feature improved McDonald's brand perception and impacted revenue growth positively and around 16% of all McDelivery orders were placed using the colour-blind friendly feature.

Battlegrounds Mobile India - Battlegrounds Mobile India - Royale Pass

Battlegrounds Mobile India, an online multiplayer battle royale game by Krafton launched its new Royale Pass, a seasonal gateway to exclusive gear and a key to enhancing a player’s rank. But it's more than just in-game goodies. In today's world, our online personas are growing in importance. With people’s identities and achievements increasingly tied towards their digital lifestyle, other related elements also followed suit - more specifically, their online clout, which became tied to their virtual presence.

The Royale Pass is designed to be your calling card in Battlegrounds Mobile India. It's a mark of distinction recognized by everyone you’ve defeated. The ad captures this perfectly. A gamer with a Royale Pass tattoo is instantly recognized by fellow players who comically drop to the ground in mock defeat. By connecting the Royale Pass to online clout, we enhance your virtual experience and make it a must-have for any serious player.

The film received over 10 million views and 6 million engagement just within a few days of the launch.

NPCIS - Slippery Spy

RuPay Credit Card is perceived as the desi, Indian cousin of Mastercard and Visa. But it had something that the cool cousins didn't have. It was the only Credit Card in India that worked on UPI (instant digital payment method). So, during IPL, the Indian cricket Superbowl, we took on other 'cooler' cards, with a film campaign that showed vendors rejecting credit cards, when you needed it the most. While credit card penetration has a lot of room to grow in India, UPI (instant digital payment method) has grown tremendously over the last 4 years with over 70 million merchants on UPI.

The film is about a couple of police detectives who have come to a bar, searching for a spy. Thankfully, the spy spots them just before the bartender gives him away. The spy gets luckier still, as just then a man selling moles is passing by the bar. The spy quickly grabs a mole and slaps it on his face as the detectives look towards him. They compare him to the picture they have and they aren't convinced it's him, because of the mole. Relieved the spy whips out his card to pay the vendor, but the vendor rejects it saying he only accepts UPI payment. In the same breath, the vendor snatches back his mole, just when the detectives turn for a second look. Suddenly his lucky day becomes an unlucky one just because he didn't have the right card.

Post-campaign brand scores on pride of being a RuPay user amongst the core TG improved too. "It is for people like me" went up by 20% "Is a Card network brand I would aspire to have" went up by 21%