Havas’ Cannes Contenders from the region

Havas has spotlighted some of their top work from the region for this month’s Cannes Lions.

One Noodle – Haraku Ramen
BLKJ Havas Singapore
The One Noodle – a solution to the growing demand for unique, immersive gaming experiences, this game-changing creation is designed for gamers who don’t want to be interrupted by the simple act of eating.

Tapping into Indonesia’s massive gaming culture, The One Noodle is a single, unbreakable 3,5-meter-long noodle. With a thicker texture designed for better flavor absorption, this noodle ensures that gamers can enjoy a satisfying meal while they’re fully immersed in their game. It’s the ultimate fusion of gaming and eating – no distractions, no interruptions, just pure gameplay.

Having officially launched at a glitzy gaming event in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, which not only celebrated Indonesia’s vibrant gaming culture – the One Noodle was available as a limited-edition product and sold out within days.

Ink of Democracy – Times of India
Havas Creative India
In the last Indian General Elections, 33% of eligible voters stayed home, wasting 7,500 litres of electoral ink.

To highlight this, The Times of India and The Economic Times printed pages in purple ink during the 2024 elections in purple ink instead of the traditional black one. For every 132 absent voters, one page was printed, totaling 2.28 million prints. The message: “Don’t waste a drop of electoral ink. Don’t waste the power of democracy.”

The ink once used as a mark of democracy became a reminder to defend it. Despite a severe heatwave, India set a world record with 642 million voters showing up to cast their vote.

Kita Initiative – Spark! Philippines
Havas Ortega
The KITA Initiative, a visibility campaign for women-owned businesses is captivating the nation with its striking fusion of design and purpose. At the heart of the initiative is KITA, a custom typeface inspired by the Filipiniana butterfly sleeve, a national icon of grace, strength and cultural pride. “KITA” is a Filipino word that means both ‘seen’ and ‘earnings’.

Launched on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day 2024, The KITA Initiative responds to a critical reality: although 66% of MSMEs in the Philippines are owned or led by women, their contributions often remain underrecognized. In a male-dominated commercial landscape, women entrepreneurs face systemic barriers to visibility and growth.

From a bustling city market to local product labels and digital storefronts, women entrepreneurs are adopting the KITA typeface to mark their businesses — a bold declaration of identity, creativity, and ownership. What began as a typographic tribute to Filipinas has become a nationwide call to action: see us, support us, celebrate us.

LullabAI – Alembic Pharmaceuticals
Havas Life Mumbai
In India, lullabies are more than just songs. They are a profound cultural ritual. They represent a unique bonding experience between a mother and her child, playing a crucial role in a baby’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. For speech-impaired mothers, the chance to share this cherished tradition has long been out of reach.

‘LullabAI’ aims to bridge this gap, offering these mothers an opportunity to create lasting memories with their babies through personalised lullabies. The platform harnesses re-imagined AI technology to transform short voice samples from speech-impaired mothers into lullabies. By employing advanced data cleaning, augmentation, and model training techniques, ‘LullabAI’ captures and applies the mother’s voice to a library of pre-recorded lullabies, creating a deeply personal and culturally relevant experience and is available for the mother to play for her baby anytime.

Call Me When You Need Me – Vivo
Havas China
In many Chinese families, especially between fathers and sons, love is rarely spoken. A single sentence — “Call me when you need me” — becomes both a barrier and a bridge.

In this short film, told entirely through phone calls, we follow a father and son as they reconnect with each other, reflecting how emotional expression is changing in modern Chinese culture. Across three generations, the same line repeats — quiet, restrained, yet deeply emotional.

Extra Finger Lickin’ Good – KFC
Havas Malaysia & Havas Media Singapore
Known for its ability to produce stunning visuals in seconds, generative AI still struggles with one thing: human hands. The result? Extra fingers, distorted digits, and bizarre hand formations. However, if you’re at KFC, having an extra finger or two might just be a good thing. After all, more fingers mean more Extra Finger Lickin’ moments.

This bold and cheeky campaign turned AI’s quirks – the infamous finger glitch into a playful brand moment.

Having launched just ahead of April Fool’s Day on March 28, the campaign playfully leans into AI’s well-documented struggles with rendering fingers.

But creating the perfect visuals wasn’t as simple as hitting ‘generate’— it took countless hours crafting the right prompts, generating hundreds of AI visuals, and fine-tuning them to strike the perfect balance between quirky and unsettling—ensuring that each execution remained playful and unmistakably KFC.