While the city was getting set for the dhol tasha brigade for Ganesh Chaturthi, at Lower Parel’s St Regis Hotel, there was another kind of drumbeating and hooting. It was the evening of Emvies 2016, the biggest and most coveted awards for media agencies in India.
Ad Club President Raj Nayak initiated the event (emceed yet again by Brian Tellis) by stating that the 16th edition of Emvies is special not only because it is his first time as the President but this time all records have been broken with close to 1000 entries coming in. He set the tone of the evening by finishing his speech with the chants of ‘Ganpati Bappa Morya!’
Mindshare maintained the top spot in the 2016 Emvies, with eight Gold, 18 Silvers and 15 Bronze metals. The agency has always had anexciting run at the Emvies, winning the media agency of the year award for six straight years till 2013. In Emvies 2014, Maxus broke Mindshare’s winning streak and won the top agency title. “One is you are habituated to doing something different. You get habituated to doing something that is working for your brands. There is a sense of responsibility that comes from leadership and being a leader in the market. Our job is to challenge the status quo and get the work done for the brands. The end result is that we are winning awards,†said Prasanth Kumar, Mindshare, CEO South Asia, about the reason behind their success.
The agency’s golden run included Best Media Strategy–Consumer Products- for Hindustan Unilever Limited’s (HUL) ‘6 Pack Band’ for Brooke Bond Red Label. In the Best Media Innovation –Branded Content, Mindshare swept up two silvers. The first came for the award winning Brooke Bond Red Label campaign, while the second was for PepsiCo India’s ‘Pepsi- When consumers became co-marketers’. They also won gold for HUL’s ‘Before Iftar time, its Lifebuoy time’ for Lifebuoy in the Best Media Innovation: Digital-Mobile. The Grand Emvie was bagged by Mindshare and Pepsi for  ‘Pepsi- When consumers became co-marketers’.
Lodestar UM and Maxus were tied at the second place in the media agency tally with 135 points. The former won six gold, three silver and three bronze metals while the later won four gold, five silver and five bronze metals. Lodestar UM gave a tough fight to both Maxus and Madison Media. Half-way through the results there was tug of war going between these three for the second, third and fourth position. But at the end, Madison Media had to settle for the fourth position with 75 points. Speaking about their win, Dhruv Jha, GM, IPG Media Brands said, “We always love winning and we always have been winners. IPG Media and Lodestar UM plus Initiative Media, we have done really well today. We had a shortlist of about 14 and we have converted 12 of them. I was confident we are going to win but winning so big was a little surprise, but when we came close we knew we were there.â€
The other big award of the evening, Best Media Client of the Year went to HUL. “The biggest award that we get is the kind of love consumers have for our brands and that is what we work for. But it is always nice to have peer appreciation for the work that we do and it is inspiring and pushes us to do more. You get appreciation for something consumers responded to positively and loved it. That is the reason why we feel awards are important,†said Gaurav Jeet Singh, Head, Media Services, HUL, after the win.
Another highlight of this year’s Emvies was the entry of the newbies like The Social Street and ibs in the Top 15 of the point’s tally, with The Social Street finishing seventh with 35 points.