These interns won a Gold Lion with a poo joke. What’s stopping you?

Having left India to study advertising (an utterly confusing step according to our families), we had practically nothing to lose when they heard a brief from the laxative brand (Sandoz Deutschland) on day two of our internship at Serviceplan Germany.

Within 30 minutes of hearing the brief, we pitched a poop joke inspired by popular British documentarian David Attenborough. To our surprise, Michael Wilk (global head of arts, Serviceplan Group) and Till Diestel (CCO Germany, Serviceplan Group) not only laughed out loud but also gave a nod of approval.

There was no better way to break the ice than bouncing poop euphemisms off each other for two straight weeks.

While there were some legal hiccups along the way, all four scripts were approved by the client pretty smoothly. It was time to enter the recording studio. Once Philipp Feit (CCO, German Wahnsinn) applied his magic with rich background sounds, all four spots– ‘Otter,’ ‘Coconut,’ ‘Volcano,’ and ‘Meteor’ –were ready to go live.

As interns, we were happy to write our first-ever radio campaign, something we had never done before. We soon learned that it was also going to be our first Cannes Lions entry as well. We hoped for a shortlist. In our deepest dreams, we prayed for a bronze.

On a rainy Saturday in Hamburg, Nidhi woke up screaming, “We got two shortlists!” Rag still couldn’t believe it. And then came the biggest possible moment of our advertising careers so far.

‘Otter’ won a Gold Cannes Lion in front of the people we had stalked on LinkedIn (sorry). As the entire Palais de Cannes laughed at a poop joke written by two interns, we felt accepted.

While we have created a number of student projects at Miami Ad School as part of our classwork, and a bunch of them picked up some student awards like D&AD New Blood, Andys, Webbys, etc., all it took was a funny poop joke to get attention from the industry. It just goes to show that every idea is worth pursuing, no matter how big the stage.

Nothing breaks the ice in a new brief like breaking wind apparently. And if two interns, who are yet to graduate from school, can win a Gold Lion with a poop joke, there is absolutely nothing stopping you!

Next is a Q&A Amy Houston conducted with Nidhi.

What does this signal for young creatives coming through the industry?

As interns and juniors, it often feels so difficult to get attention from industry leaders. There’s the pressure to nail student award briefs, learn new tools, learn new AI tools, and try to network on top of that. We did all of that. But in the end, we got recognition at Cannes for a poop joke! So we think all that signals is - there’s still room for humor on a stage as big as Cannes. As young creatives we are not supposed to be perfect, we are supposed to blurt out the silliest of ideas and let the seniors decide what works. We had two incredible mentors who pushed our silly ideas, so yeah, being silly helped.

Why is it such a huge deal?

This win just makes us realize not to take everything so seriously. Even the smallest and simplest idea can go a long way.

Are you the first interns to win at Cannes?

A bunch of people have congratulated us (at Cannes and on LinkedIn), saying that we are the first interns to produce work that has won a Gold Lion. We technically haven’t verified this, [but we would take this win anyway!

What’s next for you guys?

We graduate from Miami Ad School in September this year. We would be very happy to land a job at an agency that would embrace and mold everything we bring to the table - our humor, our passion, our culture, and our ideas. As everyone else on the internet, we are huge fans of the work coming out of Mischief, Mother, Uncommon, Rethink, GUT - so if someone there is reading this, we hope they know where to find us!