 There are awards, and there are awards. On Saturday, the International Advertising Association India Chapter’s Leadership Awards, in its fourth year in 2016, saw a host of marketers, advertising and media professionals – across 22 categories — being recognised and lauded as the most creative and strategic minds in the business.
The winners included Karthi Marshan of Kotak Mahindra Bank, Manish Dubey of ICICI Prudential, Varun Berry of Britannia, Nadia Chauhan of Parle Agro, Ajay Dang of Godrej, Samir Singh of Hindustan Unilever, Yadvinder Singh Guleria of Honda Motorcycle and Scooter, Randhir Singh Kalsi of Maruti Suzuki, Ranjivjit Singh of Samsung, Bhaskar Choudhari of Lenovo, Srinivasan Gopalan of Bharti Airtel, Amit Agarwal of Amazon, Amit Syngle of Asian Paints and Sanjay Behl of Raymond as marketers par excellence.
| ‘A&M is engine of growth for country’
Excerpts from a quick chat with Bharat Patel, former CMD of P&G India and Chairman of the Indian Society of Advertisers, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the IAA Leadership Awards As you look back, what comes to your mind in terms of how the business has changed over the years? We have been shown that speed is a big thing now. Business is being conducted at great speed now. Given the speed with which technology moves, you need to do things very fast. If you don’t there is always someone who will do it faster than you
How much of a role does advertising and marketing play in the success of a large company? Advertising and marketing is the engine of growth not just for corporates, but for the growth of country as well. Advertising and marketing asks people to consume products, and that’s how economic growth happens. Research shows that nearly 20 per cent of GDP growth is through advertising, and its impact on getting people to consume more. For companies, especially FMCG companies, the driving force is advertising.
But people often say the product is expensive because the company spends a lot on its advertising… This is a real fallacy. Because what advertising does, as I have said, is it increases consumption. When the economies of scale grow, the [price of] the product goes down. I always get asked, why are you sending so much on advertising? I usually say, how do you think Vicks Vaporub is a No 1 brand? Did that happen by magic? It happened because of very good advertising
You play a key role in ASCI and various other industry bodies. How healthy is comparative advertising in the present context? What is comparative advertising? It is competition, and competition makes you do things better. You make better products, and then you communicate that to the consumer. Even the ASCI is clear on this: You can show a comparison of products as long as you are talking about facts.
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Special awards were also given out to Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group for CEO of the Year and to Raj Nayak of Colors as the Media Person of the Year while Ashish Bhasin, of the Dentsu Aegis network, and Josy Paul of BBDO got the Media Agency and Creative Agency Heads of the Year awards. Rajat Sharma of India TV was chosen Television Anchor of the Year, while Sanjay Gupta of Dainik Jagran was awarded the News Editor of the Year honour. Bharat Patel, former CMD, Procter & Gamble and Chairman of the Indian Society of Advertisers, was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and actor Varun Dhawan was Endorser of the Year.
Said Srinivasan K Swamy, President of IAA’s India Chapter: “The IAA Leadership Awards are testimony to the inspirational work that industry leaders and creative minds accomplish during the course of the year. We are celebrating the extraordinary work and journey of the industry at large from the year gone by. The campaigns have achieved much success in the brand’s positioning and perception.â€
So what sets the IAA awards apart? For one thing, they recognise individuals rather than organisations. So awards are given for the Media Agency or Creative Agency Head of the Year, rather than the agencies themselves; or News Editor of the Year, rather than the publication. Moreover, advertising expenditure has nothing to do with the final selection of the leadership awards winners, said Sam Balsara, Chairman of the IAA Leadership Awards committee. “The key differentiators in deciding on the winners were growth in marketshare and growth in sales volume. The amount of advertising has nothing to do with it, except when choosing which categories to include,†Balsara said. “This year, we have seen some tough competition that has been carried out by teams across industries. The decision-making process has been robust and after deep deliberation, we have finally arrived on the list of winners.â€
The process followed by the IAA awards is an exhaustive one. “The marketing awards are based entirely on data,†Balsara said. “Once we decided on the categories, we picked the five brands with the largest market share growth in that category.†In the first year, the winners were selected through peer voting, but now the system requires a large amount of data to be collated and sifted through (by a knowledge partner, in this case Nielsen), and the finalists are picked by a jury.  In the coming years, however, Balsara would like more and better access to data, particularly for industries like e-commerce. “We have to figure out ways and means to get that,†said Balsara. Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju was chief guest and presented the awards.
This report first appeared in dna of brands dated March 14,2016 Â 