TVS- The Responsible Manhole: Inside Dentsu’s first entry to Cannes Lions 2023

Dentsu Creative had a dream run at the Cannes Lions Festival last year as it won  the  Agency of the Year title, the first Indian agency ever to win the honour. Obviously, the expectations from them are very high this year and the agency too  is putting its best foot forward. 

Dentsu Creative will this year send four of their best works to the festival of creativity. One of them, TVS- The Responsible Manhole, has already been sent. 

About The Responsible Manhole

The Responsible Manhole campaign highlights the problem of open manholes in India. In coastal cities like Mumbai, open manholes  take a life every 12 hours. 

The film talks about a low-cost, easily scalable 3D-printed device that has been developed to make Mumbai’s streets safer. Using the principle of buoyancy, the device rises up to 5 feet when a manhole cover is dislodged on a flooded street. LED lights and a loud buzzer alert passersby of the danger. A specially designed mobile app connected to the device alerts the municipality in real-time about the geo-location of the open manhole, so that they can take prompt action.

More about the campaign

https://www.dentsucreative.com/cases/the-responsible-manhole

Gurbaksh Singh, Chief Innovation Officer, Dentsu CReative India, speaks to us about their first entry to Cannes Lion 2023 

Why have you chosen this particular campaign?

We believe this campaign is not just taking a brand's vision ahead but also has the potential to solve a deep-rooted problem in a real-world scenario. The road to smart cities will be paved through collaborative mass implementation at scale.

Tell us everything about the campaign - the brief, the challenges, the receipt

The initial brief was on how to move TVS's key principle which is "safety of the ridders comes first" a step further. It was a tricky engineering and conceptual challenge to solve, as we needed to develop a solution that could withstand the highly hostile environment of a manhole. In a country like India where the average municipal worker is not tech-savvy, we made things extremely easy in their regional languages to help them understand and take prompt actions to resolve the issue. 

What are you expecting from the awards this year?

Awards for creatives are more than just expressions of recognition, they also serve as a source of inspiration. Like every year, the team is eager to see us put our best foot forward. 

The agency has entered the work into the following categories -

Innovation

A03 Applied Innovation

Mobile

A03 Connected Devices / Wearables      

Design

D05 Wayfinding & Signage

Outdoor

E03 Technology

F07 Corporate Purpose & Social Responsibility

Brand Experience & Activation

E03 Single-market Campaign

E07 Corporate Purpose & Social Responsibility