The exchange4media Dainik Bhaskar INK Awards 2014 were given away to the best innovations in newspaper advertising at a glittering ceremony at ITC Grand Central, Lower Parel, Mumbai last night, May 15, 2014.
exchange4media spoke to some of the winners to gauge their reactions on winning the Awards and what these Awards mean for the advertising fraternity...
Gayatri Yadav, CMO, STAR India: Strategy and creativity are paramount across mediums. We at Star are honoured to be selected as Advertiser of the Year – creating the most compelling and innovative print media campaigns of the year – across all categories in India. It is testimony to the creative collaboration and breakthrough ideas and innovation demonstrated by Team Star, in collaboration with our creative and media partners. The 3D Mahabharat print ad, a first in the category, literally got the youth to see” an age-old epic with new eyes. It was innovation used to refresh an age-old epic with a younger audience. The Star Sports refresh print campaign inspired India to put sports first – by placing the sports page, historically relegated to the back – as the front page across leading newspapers in the country. In both cases, it’s testimony to the power of an idea well executed.
Abhijit Avasthi, National Creative Director, O&M: It is a great honour, especially newspaper advertising is something that unfortunately is losing its sheen sometimes, and I think to be recognised by the community, to do exceptional work in that is really encouraging. I think it is a big message out there for all of us, all our clients, and all the brands. I think it is important to have a specific set of awards that recognise excellence in print and that is simply because today there are so many media avenues out there – there is the internet, television, radio, the noise of which is so much more louder, so there are chances that excellence in print does not get the due that it deserves, and platforms like this really encourage that.
Rajiv Rao, National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather: It feels great to win the Agency of the Year, especially considering it is print awards, and Ogilvy has done really well, so very happy about it. I think it is a great initiative because it will really help to see good work in print, which we have not been seeing. So, I think we should push print and creativity in print more. It is a great initiative.
Deepa Jatkar, General Manager, Mediacom: I think it is an absolutely awesome feeling, the inaugural session for the Awards and Mediacom got the award for Agency of the Year, I cannot describe how great it is. We were nominated in four categories and we converted all four. I think it is a perfect way to start, maybe sort of an early weekend.
Nandini Dias, CEO, Lodestar UM: I’m truly delighted to actually win both a Gold and a Silver. We won a Gold for Coke. There is very interesting work that we did on Coca Cola. Coca Cola comes with ‘Open Happiness’ as its central thought, and we actually just didn’t release the ads, we got Hindustan Times in, we got a whole survey on what constitutes happiness, what makes people do things which will make others happy, created a whole index across cities, and we had people participation. It was not a one-time ad-hoc ad, it was actually a whole campaign that we did on happiness.
On Nerolac, we did another interesting thing, if you see the CMYK registration in a newspaper, almost all papers round the world have a CMYK registration and that looks like a paint shade card, so one day we were actually looking at the newspapers and we thought why not use this page to actually talk of Nerolac as a brand and the paint service that it has and the kind of shades that it can provide. So interestingly, the CMYK registration has never been used by any advertiser, and nor does the production unit think that it is space that can be sold. So, for the first time when we actually went and spoke to news sales people, that can we use this space to connect the dots and make a paint ad. However, they felt that it was not possible and that the printing press would never allow it, but finally we managed to convince the newspapers and had a superb campaign for Nerolac. It is a sustainable thing and can be done throughout the year, can be done on all pages, all publications, and globally. So, I think it is one of the better works that we have done this year.
Rahul daCunha, Owner, daCunha Communications: I felt very reassured today that if there are awards that are going to celebrate advertising, then I think advertising agencies will be able to feel motivated to be able to do more and convince clients to spend more on advertising, and today is a great initiative.
Source: Exchange4media.com
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