Cannes Lions to bestow Lion of St. Mark award upon brothers Piyush and Prasoon Pandey
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will honor brothers Piyush Pandey (executive chairman and creative director Ogilvy South Asia) and Prasoon Pandey ( film director) with the Lion of St. Mark award at the 2018 festival.
Cannes Lions to bestow Lion of St. Mark award upon brothers Piyush and Prasoon Pandey
The Lion of St. Mark award is given for the outstanding contribution to the creative industry award. Piyush earlier won his first Cannes Lions awards with two Gold Lions for his work on an anti-smoking campaign in 2002.
Piyush was also the first person in the Advertising and Communication category to be awarded with Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2016. While Prasoon directed the first Indian campaign to win a Lion, for Ericsson’s ‘One Black Coffee’ in 1996.
Piyush said: “This is a huge, huge honour. I am humbled and immensely grateful to the people of India. It is the richness and diversity of this nation that gave my brother and me the opportunity to learn and to create good work. I am also indebted to my clients, my colleagues and Ogilvy who gave me the support and the freedom to fly. Thank you Cannes Lions for giving every creative professional in my country a reason to believe that if Prasoon and Piyush can do it, so can they.”
Prasoon said: “The Lion of St Mark is an absolutely incredible and stunning honour for two 10-15 year-old kids from Jaipur who were just having a blast playing emperors and thugs, dragons and demons, dreaming stories and playing them out with some far more imaginative and talented friends. We were so engrossed in that play that we forgot that we were well into our 50s and 60s! This is such a huge and humbling honour for us; I just hope it doesn’t make the kids inside us conscious.”
Jose Papa, managing director of Cannes Lions said: “Piyush and Prasoon have undoubtedly made the world pay attention to creativity in India. While they are famous, and rightly so, in their homeland, I’m thrilled that we have this opportunity to celebrate their contributions to our industry on the Cannes Lions stage. The fact we get to honour the achievements of two brothers makes this year’s Lion of St. Mark award particularly special.”