"Are you from an agency?"...I found being asked: Juju Basu

The name of the show is now the International Festival of Creativity as opposed to Advertising or Publicity as the locals called it. The speakers to look out for are not from advertising. In fact to quote Sean Combs aka P Diddy, he “hates advertising like most people do”. The general message is to create meaningful content and to be authentic. Don't just join conversations, create them, be useful, don't be obsessed with what you can make but think what you can help others make.

Dame Vivienne Westwood, the grand old lady of punk and climate change campaigner urges us to find something to fight for, “Your idea must be a real, true idea. Fight for it and you will see how everything is connected.” Gareth Kay of Goodby Silverstein & Partners feels our industry is at a fork, where we either transform or become redundant. Paul Bennett of Ideo realised they were just polluting the world with more products, so decided to shift their focus on to ideas that people needed. Conan O'brien asks us to be authentic, at the cost of profit.

So for us back in good old India, when we get that next TV commercial brief, we need to think very hard at what the real problem is and what the solution should be.

I came in here (Cannes) last week to judge the Direct Lions. It was my first jury experience at this level. I had been warned about the hard work, the hundreds of two-minute case studies that have to be watched and intelligently commented on. About 550 entries took three days, countless espressos, a few bananas and a regular supply of chocolate croissants to scan. The jury collectively went through 2,756 entries. Things got better from Day 4, after the initial shortlist was made. The quality of work was higher and some interesting conversations started with the very diverse group of 25 people. There were people from the UK, US, Canada, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Romania and Switzerland. Mark Tutssel, the President kept the house in order in school teacher fashion. Though it was quite a worldly aware bunch, Asia could be better represented. A few ideas might have gotten lost in this largely first world group.

The Direct category is an interesting one. Firstly, being Direct means that it’s the most persuasive and engaging work by design. And it’s media-free. So the best work from the entire festival is entered here. Some of the work is great for its ingenuity – the Driving Dogs. Some for the perfection in craft and campaign architecture – Dumb Ways to Die, which now has more lions than Africa! Some for their simplicity – the Third Eye. And the odd pieces of genius – the Oreo Blackout Tweet, which in my books was the biggest game-changer we judged.

The crowd at the Festival has got a lot of clients – which is good, so they see the importance of creativity in transforming businesses. In fact there is a new question I found being asked, “Are you from an agency?”

It will be interesting to take a look at the Festival in a few years and see where it’s gone, where the ads vs. content battle has reached, are there mainly agencies participating or are there college students and YouTube stars taking Lions home. What I hear the Festival saying is “Advertising is dead, long live Advertising”.