Praptee Sharma (Manager – Product Marketing) and Roshni Iyengar (Manager – Strategic Initiatives), representing India and Jio Platforms, have won India’s first Gold Medal in the prestigious Young Lions – Marketers competition, 2024! The competition is held as a part of the Cannes International Festival of Creativity- to identify and celebrate emerging young professionals from all around the world.
With this year’s competition seeing participation from over 400 individuals from 69+ countries, Praptee and Roshni surpassed participants from countries such as the UK, Spain, Ireland, Canada, and more inthe global round.
About the competition:
The Young Lions competition, an annual case study event integral to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, serves as a pinnacle for professionals in creative communications and advertising globally. Regarded as the largest congregation of the advertising and creative communications industry worldwide, the festival is a beacon for innovation and excellence.
Each country selects the best team of young professionals across categories such as Marketing, Print, Media- with Praptee and Roshni being selected as the team to represent India in the Marketing category from hundreds of participants- besting leading companies such as ITC, L’Oreal, Reckitt, Coca Cola, and more.
Each year, the Competition jury chairs select a non-profit organization as the subject of the competition briefs. This year, The World Bank’s International Development Agency was the partner that required the participants to develop a solution to ‘create awareness for the upcoming replenishment in December and to establish IDA 21 as the best investment in the future’. The teams only had 24 hours to come up with the marketing strategy by incorporating their respective brands in the solution.
The winning solution:
Praptee and Roshni gave it their creative best and brought home India’s first ever gold by addressing the general perception of the youth being apathetic towards global issues by putting forth their idea ‘I Do Give A F***’. Using Ajio as a part of their solution, they leveraged the platform’s massive reach, and edgy brand ethos to create a solution- which gamified IDA’s business model in a way to make young people take notice and generate social awarenes
The jury comprised of marketing stalwarts from across the globe like Andrea Quaye (The Coca Cola, Company), Chris Brown (SVP, McDonalds, Australia), Shannon Womack (Ryan Air, USA), Melissa Chen (Uber Eats, Taiwan) and Gabriel Suárez Ortega (Edgewell Personal Care, Columbia) who appreciated the duo’s ability to create an eye-catching solution which was practical, and also had business viability. The jury also appreciated their understanding of the brief and their unique insight into the factors which hold young people back from being a part of real change.
News Coverage:
Economic Times- Brand Equity Front page- 22nd June, 2024
Economic Times- Brand Equity Front Page- 26th June, 2024
