With less than a month to go for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Manifest continues with its Cannes Contenders series.

Through this, we aim to showcase India's work for the Lions before the festival kicks off, as the country looks to better its 18-Lions haul from 2024.

Here are DDB Mudra Group's entries.

Stayfree - #BetaStayfreeLeAana - Health & Wellness, Glass 

Category entered in: The Lion for Change

Stayfree made it their mission to make men talk about menstruation, realizing that a woman’s shame around periods comes from the discomfort of the men around her.

The reason was discovered as conditioning from childhood: as young boys and men are taught to look away from periods. Since 2022, Stayfree has hijacked Daughter’s Day to talk to sons – because if boys can be comfortable about periods, girls will be, too. Instead of PR-worthy buzz, we wanted to create lasting behaviour change through interaction and action. 

So, Stayfree urged parents to make their sons comfortable with periods by simply adding a pad brand – Stayfree or otherwise – to the shopping list they often handed to boys for a run to the store. Stayfree’s goal is to make boys as comfortable with buying pads as they are with toothpaste or bread – putting India another step closer to breaking generations of period shame. 

Krafton Inc - Great In-Game Wedding

Categories entered in: Entertainment Lions For Gaming, PR, Design

Being India’s largest gaming platform, BGMI has a responsibility towards the image of gaming itself. And it wasn’t helping that our own impact on the lives of gamers was portrayed as addiction and violence. But the truth about BGMI, and many other games, is that for gamers it is a platform connecting different individuals.

Gamers spend 3x more time in the BGMI lobby than in the game. It’s a place where gamers find friendships, advice, counselling and at times even love. Love has the power to change emotions and opinions. And when love turns into a Great Indian Wedding it can move anyone to join the bandwagon.

So we took an engaged couple and married them where they met. Inside BGMI. And invited India to be a part of the celebrations of the 'Great In-game Wedding'.

McDonald’s - Shakashaka 

Categories entered in: Entertainment Lions For Music, Social & Creator. 

To reignite Gen Z’s love for McDonald’s fries, we looked into their world of memes and music, where they chose brands that build experiences relevant to their culture. This understanding, combined with a key consumer insight - our fan truth - shaped our strategy:  

“If you haven’t shaken your fries, do you even know you’ve eaten them right?” People love shaking our Shake Shake Fries because that’s what makes eating them, perfectly divine.  

 To appeal to this audience’s entertainment, humorous, and shareable content-first appetite, we decided to build a mockumentary world and converted Shake Shake Fries into Shakashaka: a musical percussion instrument, spreading its vibrations across stores and the internet to create a first-of-its-kind musical tribe. 

Flipkart - Big Billion Days - The Cover Up Coupon

Categories entered in: Brand Activation & Experience, Creative Commerce. 

To win over Gen Z, India’s biggest shopaholics, Flipkart turned its Big Billion Days sale into its biggest Gen Z sale ever. Still, it wasn’t going to be enough to get Gen Z to order frequently from Flipkart. Why? 

82% of Indian Gen Z lives with parents who see any spending as too much spending. And welcome every Flipkart delivery that comes home with truckloads of taunts. So Flipkart went beyond giving just discounts. They created Cover-up Coupons. A collection of fake scratch-and-win vouchers for every Gen Z during the sale to make their shopping look like winning. Gen Z could simply order it via Flipkart’s app while shopping, and get it delivered before the actual item. Making parents believe all their shopping was won and not bought.