Tag: Emvies 2013

 

As The Advertising Club hosts Emvies 2013 in Mumbai this evening (September 6), we bring you a curtain-raiser

 

By Shephali Bhatt

 

It’s interesting how you can draw parallels between Emvies shortlisted case studies presentation and video games. There are some levels of difficulty that you manage to overcome after repeated attempts, and yet others that you always fail to cross, which makes ‘Game Over’ a more likely scenario than ‘Game Won’.

 

Last year, we highlighted the good and bad at the Emvies ’12 presentation and offered some tips to cross those tough levels. To our utter dismay, some of the hurdles remain intact.

 

The AVs still pretty much parrot the points made in the preceding presentations. Only the production values are slightly slicker this time. And full points for the choice of music, guys.

 

There were still some poetry recitals that had to be stopped midway yet again, because the agency didn’t time their presentation to the stipulated 10 minutes. But there were more levels won.

 

As noted by Abdul Khan, one of the judges and hub retail operations lead at Reliance, the presentations addressed a diversity of issues. One of the campaigns that ranked high on the popularity meter was Lodestar UM’s ‘Saridon – National Headache Reliever’, wherein the media agency used small segments on news channels and movie reviews as a medium to drive awareness for the “graveyard brand” in order to make it a currency to define degrees of headache.

 

Movie critic Bhawana Somaaya was roped in to rate movies and replace her star ratings with how many Saridons a certain movie’s watching would require. For instance, if she gave a 2 Star rating to a movie, the viewer would need 3 Saridons. The initiative led to a 125 per cent increase in the brand’s preference score and revved up sales by 33 per cent as well.

 

Then there was a potential winner that perhaps lagged behind on presentation skills but managed to impress the judges and some of the young presenters alike. This was IBS’s entry called Tata Docomo – Hyper Personalisation – World’s first CRM powered digital media campaign.

 

The digital agency used Facebook’s sponsored feed to deliver personalised messages to its users based on their account details and usage. Outcome: Tata Docomo gained 3,50,000 lapsed users.

 

Lubna Lanjekar, a young media planner from MEC, who handles online was impressed by how the study married technology with social media.

 

This time Emvies also had a few firsts to its credit, informs Punitha Arumugam, managing committee member, The Advertising Club. Judging sessions in New Delhi in addition to Mumbai was one such novel element. Introduction of new sub categories in ‘Best Media Innovation -TV and Print’, ‘Best Integrated Campaign’ and ‘Best Use of Research’, was another. Also, the category ‘Best Use of Sponsorship’ made a comeback this year.

 

Creative and media agencies got closer on the Emvies platform. There were shortlists from Ogilvy India for Lifebuoy Roti Reminder and Akanksha Foundation – Joy of Teaching, both of which drove the message of social consciousness.

 

Unlike strategy-heavy case studies that brought on ennui for participants from creative agencies, these presentations with mass appeal found a better connect with Pashyn Sethna, a young copywriter from DDB Mudra who was accompanying his colleagues from DDB Mudramax for the presentation on Birla Sun Life Insurance – Agent on Track.

 

At the same time, some young media planners, like Mediacom’s Zarius Captain, felt that these, along with a few other case studies had a great insight and potential but were not presented very well.

 

Most of the agency teams, involving at the most three to four members, had started working on these presentations only a week in advance even when they had two weeks between shortlists announcement and presentation. Perhaps that explains why some judges thought there was less meat and more gimmick in some of the case study presentations.

 

On the other hand, Sanjay Tripathy, another jury member and senior executive vice president – marketing, product & direct channels, HDFC Life felt that this year, the quality of the work, as well as the presentations had gone up and there was some innovative work done on digital, be it search, social media, display or video. He adds though that more client participation during final presentations will definitely enhance credibility of the entries.

 

Speaking of credibility of entries, some judges also raised issues on the awareness level scores and stated they would really prefer to hear more about how marketing drove business growth in real terms. To this, Ravi Rao, leader – South Asia at Mindshare, said, “They are right. Ad awareness or brand awareness doesn’t necessarily tell you about brand’s growth. But then how often do you get to know the story of which part of the medium pushed what?”

 

The presentation time is over now, the results will be out on September 6. One would only hope there will be newer mistakes next year. That the AVs will say something more than the PPTs that preceded them. And most of all, the poetry recitals, if any, won’t have to be stopped midway.

 

 

 

 

 

Source:The Economic Times

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