By A Correspondent
In the news for the right reasons, screamed the T-shirts worn by the large contingent from DDB Mudra as they ran up to collect the only Black Elephant for Zydus Wellness Ltd’s Nutralite The Black Elephant is the highest award presented by Kyoorius and is the equivalent of the Grand Prix at the Goafest Abby.
Kyoorius, in association with D&AD, the London-based body of creative, design and advertising communities, held an awards event to announce the winners of the second edition of the Kyoorius Advertising & Digital Awards at Dome, at the NSCI stadium in Mumbai. Over 1,800 advertising and marketing professionals from across India and abroad attended the event held on Friday evening.
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Piyush Pandey
Executive Chairman and Creative Director, Ogilvy India
I am so happy that we won 15 awards because the young people at Ogilvy are taking the tradition forward and making us look good, making me look good, and the brand Ogilvy look better, and they are making their clients look better. It feels good. I didn’t see much of mainline work today and I would like to see more of it next year. There is a lot of work that we as industry practitioners appreciate, but I would like to see more work that consumers appreciated and was good enough for the jury to appreciate as well. I miss some of that work. I think the jury was fantastic. I know many people on the jury; it was a wonderful jury. But I think the Indian jury should be more balanced, to get the sensibilities a little better. They are much better than I’ve ever seen, but we could get even better in the future.
Madhukar Kamath
 Group CEO and MD, DDB Mudra group
Good work rises to the top, appreciation is wonderful, the team is happy. Full credit to Sonal and his team for all the work they’ve been doing over the last few years. It is a vindication of the belief — work in silence and let success be your noise. It was good to see the quality of work right across different categories and feel happier that some of your work has risen to the top. It was a good body of work.
(Talking about the jury )Every awards show has its own flavour. Globally, that’s also been the scenario. This is the type of jury that a Kyoorius puts together, which is good. I’ve always thought that as long as there is peer group appreciation, it is good.
In India brands have been built over centuries. That does not mean that we’re not doing great work. I’ve never believed that India has been inferior. Here, you do work for India. Right from the beginning, we’ve built great brands here. Indian advertising has always been culturally contextual and it has been wonderful in terms of building brands for the country, because that is what advertising is all about, in terms of content that builds brands and connects to consumers.
Rana Barua
 CEO, Contract Advertising
The fact that Kyoorius has kept only one colour elephant is a good and interesting format for now. We’ll have to see in the long run how we can sustain something like this. We at Contract won a lot of awards. The quality of work is good, and clients are pushing us to do better, so that’s the big challenge. The jury is very prestigious, very eclectic, interesting. Only that sometimes you wonder whether they get the whole thing, because there is a lot of international jury judging Indian work. With a lot of Indian friends in the jury, I’m sure they understand what is happening. Maybe we need more Indian presence on the jury, because a lot of unique work happens within our country, because our country is a lot more unique than others. I think India is pretty sorted in the way we work, because it appeals to Indians. India itself is a nation of many countries put together. If our campaigns work for such a massive country, they will work anywhere in the world as well.
(interviews by Dyanne Coelho)
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The next level of awards – the Blue Elephant — was presented for Creative (36 winners, 38 if you consider that two of them were shared by two agencies) and Digital Advertising (12 winners). Ogilvy bagged 13 Blue Elephants in Creative and two in Digital. Two of the Ogilvy creative awards were awarded jointly.
From Times Square-inspired sets, to sound and motion graphics, the entire visual experience for the night was created by Dutch and Malaysian specialists. Hosts Suresh Venkat and Mandira Bedi regaled the crowd with witty banter in the 75-odd minute awards presentation.
A total of 1,419 entries (up almost 40% from the previous year) were submitted across advertising and digital categories. Ogilvy, DDB Mudra, Contract Advertising, Ideas@Work, Scarecrow Communications, Soho Square, BBH, BBDO India, Dentsu Webchutney, Madison, Madison BMB, ITSA Brand Innovations, Experience Commerce, Rediffusion Y&R, BBH, Famous Innovations, Havas Worldwide, Fanatics Viscomm, Grey, Linen Lintas, PHD India, Sapient, Web Maffia, River Advertising, Creativeland Asia, Blink Digital, Whyness Worldwide, and TBWA were some of the agencies who were awarded the ‘Baby Elephant’ trophy as ‘In Book’ winners.
Of the 163 In Book winners, also nominees for Blue Elephants, the advertising and digital juries awarded 36 Blue Elephants in Advertising and 12 Blue Elephants in Digital categories.
In the advertising categories, the 36 Blue Elephant winners included campaigns by Contract Advertising, Ideas@Work, Creativeland Asia, Ogilvy, Early Man Film, DDB Mudra, BBDO, Fanatics, Grey, TBWA and Linen Lintas.
In digital categories, 12 Blue Elephant winners included work by PHD India, Pigeon & Co., Quasar, Quidich, Dentsu Webchutney, Experience Commerce, Leaf Design, Madison Media, Sapient and Ogilvy.
DDB Mudra was awarded the lone Black Elephant this year for the direct marketing campaign, Health Cha Shree Ganesh. The campaign for Nutralite, gave the Ganesh idol a healthy makeover – with a physically fit idol and equally fit priest, accompanied by sugarfree modaks and offerings at a pandal in Mumbai. Devotees could participate in Zumba workouts while waiting in line and ‘donate’ calories while working out on a treadmill.
Said Aneil ‘Andee’ Deepak, Executive Director, DDB Mudra Group and Head of Ideas, DDB MudraMax and who now heads the agency’s experiential business after MudraMax President Mandeep Malhotra move on: “The standard of work that has come in this year has really improved and so have the judging standards. The judging is so top notch that winning here means everything. This is the best award show in India. We feel fantastic. I think the move of keeping only the Blue Elephant award, taking away division between categories of winning is a good move. It makes the hungrier survive. If you are hungry for that one black elephant, you better beat everyone else. It’s a great motivation to win the black elephant.â€
Rajesh Kejriwal, Founder-CEO of Kyoorius, said on the awards: “We are overwhelmed by the response. Our association with D&AD guarantees a transparent and neutral platform, with the jury representing the best of international and local talent.â€
When asked about the trends this year, he said: “We saw a lot of work around gender equality and women’s rights, reflecting the national sentiment on these issues. Plus, of course, in a World Cup year, loads of cricket.â€
Tim Lindsay, CEO of D&AD who is associated with Kyoorius for a second consecutive year (or a third, if you include the Design Awards that he is associated with for three years), said: “The Kyoorius Awards continue to grow in size and stature, and are an important indicator of the world-class standards of the Indian creative scene. But the real heroes are the creatives themselves, who are producing ever more engaging, emotional and beautifully-crafted work  D&AD are proud to partner.† At the international D&AD awards, which were incidentally also held last week, Indian agencies won some ‘Pencils’, as the Metals?? medals?? are called there.
Alongside the Elephant winners, all nominations will be featured in the Kyoorius Advertising Awards Annual and the Kyoorius Digital Awards Annual – distributed to over 5,000 corporates and creatives across India.
The awards night marked the end of a two-day festival of creativity in advertising, media and marketing developed by Kyoorius in partnership with Zee, marketing services giant GroupM and D&AD.
DDB-U@MICA, a learning institution responsible for educating varying levels across the DDB Mudra Group has launched in India. Working along with MICA Ahmedabad, the DDB Mudra Group has just concluded two key Career Development and Engagement Programs. A three day MDP (Management Development Program) and a unique three day IMP (India Management Program), for its current and future leaders.
