Cannes Lions: Here’s what Talented.agency is sending for the festival of creativity

This year, the Indian advertising industry is all geared up to meet the expectations around Cannes Lions after last year’s resounding success. Continuing with our series on the entries from India this year, we look at Talented.agency’s two entries at Cannes Lions 2023.

We reached out to PG Aditya, Co-founder at Talented.agency, to know more about their entries for the festival. Talented is sending two entries -  Swiggy’s Why is this a Swiggy ad and Cleartrip’s Code Print Ad. It should be noted that PG Aditya’s work at dentsu Creative got the agency the ‘Agency of the Year’ award with Unfiltered History bagging many more.

Why is this a Swiggy ad 

Last year in October, Swiggy, the food delivery app, posted a retro-futuristic style ad with many iconic elements like the Gulab Jamun uncle, Instamart paper bag, Bisleri 5-litre bottles, and the dubious satellite image forward of India lit up during Diwali in it. 

Netizens had a rollicking time on Swiggy's social media pages after the food delivery app posted a cryptic image with the question "Why is this a Swiggy ad?" The internet obliged and has been commenting on Swiggy's Twitter thread and Instagram comment section. After all, there's a Rs 1 lakh Swiggy money reward for the craziest theory.

drop your wildest and funniest theories with hashtag #WITASA to tell us why is this a swiggy ad and WIN 1 LAKH IN SWIGGY MONEY ?? pic.twitter.com/87IbYh1v2J

— Swiggy (@Swiggy) October 13, 2022

Netizens were asked to come up with the craziest answers to the question with the hashtag #WITASA (Why is it a Swiggy ad?). The campaign website (www.whyisthisaswiggyad.com) is designed to help fans of the campaign explore each element in extreme detail and unlock hidden clues that will help them crack the mystery.

Speaking on the process, Teresa Sebastian, creative at Talented, said, “It was the most enjoyable creative process, with relentless hours of making plots and sub-plots and weaving a story that you’d hear only once in your lifetime. The inspiration was 50s illustration style and sci-fi comics and movie posters (think Other Worlds, Space Man, At the Earth's Core). It was a conscious choice to make the visual an illustration to break the monotony and also to fully justify the madness we had in our minds. And of course, it took a village. Right from a fantastic client team, who was the secret sauce in making this campaign come alive at its creative best, to my colleagues at T6D and to partners like illustrator Nishikant Palande and website partner Kalpit Dwivedi.”

Cleartrip’s Code Print Ad

To encourage people to think outside of their city simply by making smarter decisions during this sale season, Cleartrip launched a print advertisement designed by Talented.agency in association with Web Dimension. 

This advertisement from Cleartrip attempts to make people rethink their spending strategy and encourages them to tour the world instead of buying unneeded goods at a time when the newspapers are flooded with a torrent of sale season ads screaming hefty discounts and price reduction.

The other standout feature was a website called ortraveloncleartrip.com, where users may scan any sale advertisement seen on any page of a newspaper (or elsewhere) to access a travel deal from Cleartrip for the same price. When the page is scanned, offers for domestic and international travel, 3-star hotels, and upscale accommodations appear.