Countdown to Cannes 2012: Design will be TBWA India's stronghold this year

The agency is riding high with its work for Adidas, Yatra.com, Imagine retail stores and MKV Households entered in the Design category at Cannes 2012.

Design seems to have been TBWA India's forte in the previous year, considering that all the entries that the agency is pinning its hopes on to shine at Cannes 2012 have been entered in the Design category.

Quiz Rahul Sengupta, national creative director, TBWA India and he agrees. "The best work approved by our clients this year has been in design. It has been our stronghold. However, it is not a mere coincidence but more pre-planned," he says.

According to TBWA, the best work among its Cannes entries this year are those done for Adidas, Yatra.com, Imagine store and MKV Households.

The Adidas creative titled 'Sachin Postal Stamps' is the only one to have been also entered for a Direct Lion, besides Design.

For Adidas, the team at the agency was briefed to pay respect to cricketer Sachin Tendulkar as the country anticipated the occasion when he scores his 100th international century. Working on the task, a collectible mosaic of 99 postal stamps commemorating each of Tendulkar's 99 centuries was made.

With the Yatra.com campaign (Tyre Tracks), the brief was to announce that besides air travel, the online travel booking company was also a one-stop shop for road travel-related services. Using Yatra's known expertise in air travel bookings, cues were taken to design the poster. Many airplane icons were put together in the creative to create what looked like tyre tracks.

The work for Imagine retail stores, a premium reseller of Apple products, used 'Fingerprints'. The brief was to announce the iPod Touch gaming challenge at the store. The insight used was iPod touch screens that were smudged by fingerprints through incessant game play. The posters created and placed in the store featured smudged iPod screens that showed athletes in action made of fingerprints.

The final creative TBWA India is banking on is the work for Elephant Combs, a brand of MKV Households. Looking to re-design branding of Elephant Combs, a simple logo was designed for the brand that brought alive through visual play the brand name using the product.

"It really can't get simpler than this," laughs Sengupta, talking about the entry. "It is the minimal piece of art direction. All that the art director has done is to add a full stop. Yet, it worked," he says.

And, it has worked indeed! The Elephant Combs logo has already been recognised at the One Show Awards 2012. TBWA India hopes it will recreate the magic at Cannes as well, along with its other entries.