Grey's Dheeraj Sinha and Sonya Misquitta win at WPP Atticus Awards 2014

Their paper titled, 'Hungry for familiar foods - packaging local food ideas', received the 'Highly Commendable' award in the 'Strategy' category.

The WPP Atticus Awards 2014 results have been announced. Open exclusively to professionals working in WPP companies, the awards honour original, published thinking in communication services (not commercial work done for clients) every year.

Grey's chief strategy officer, South & South East Asia Dheeraj Sinha along with senior planning manager Sonya Misquitta, received the 'Highly Commended' award in the Strategy category for their paper on 'Hungry for familiar foods - packaging local food ideas'. This is the third win for Sinha.

The paper offers MNCs in India the opportunity to unlock new sources of revenue and reach new audiences. It discusses how the bigger play in India is in packaging local food ideas than merely adapting global products to local tastes. Multinationals, typically, get caught in the organised market and its dynamics, whereas the real opportunity lies in the local, unorganised segments.

The dynamics of tastes and recipes in the unorganised segment are hugely different from the western formulations that MNCs typically push in India. Imagine the market potential that burger brands such as McDonald's are missing out on by not factoring in popular street food burgers such as the vada pav, omelet pav, and keema pav or kachchi dabeli to its menu.

"I firmly believe that only if you dig at new places can you will find new stuff. This is an award for our way of working," notes Sinha, who leads the strategic planning function for Grey in India, South & South East Asia. Previously, he led planning for Bates (WPP Group) in Asia, across 13 countries. He has worked in advertising for over 15 years across McCann Erickson, Euro RSCG, Bates and now Grey.

Sinha also co-authored 'Consumer India - Inside the Indian Mind and Wallet', published by John Wiley & Sons. He has worked on brands across markets and categories including Sensodyne, Maxis, Maybank, Reliance Mobile, Colgate, MasterCard, LG, DBS Bank, Tata AIA, TVS and Virgin Mobile.