IAA hosts third edition of Leadership Awards

Awards recognize the efforts marketers from various industries put into their segment. CVL Srinivas and Prasoon Joshi win the media agency head and advertising agency head of the year award respectively.

The third edition of the IAA Leadership Awards took place in Mumbai's Hyatt on Saturday, April 18. Organised by the International Advertising Association India Chapter, the IAA Leadership Awards recognizes and felicitates marketers from various industries.

"These are a collection of seekers of excellence, which makes them humble and lets the nation progress," said Srinivasan K Swamy, chairman, RK Swamy BBDO and president, IAA India Chapter. ". I am humbled and proud at the same time. Humbled, because I am in the midst of a distinguished audience and proud, because this is only the third year of IAA Leadership Awards and it has already established itself as an industry standard."

The marketer of the year - Auto Two Wheelers award was given to Yadvinder Singh Guleria from Honda Motorcycle & Scooters. For Passenger Vehicles the award went to Maruti Suzuki's Manohar Bhat. In the banking segment, SBI's B Sriram took home the award while for Insurance, HDFC Life's Sanjay Tripathy won the award. The marketer of the year in Cellular Phone Services went to Sashi Shankar from Idea Cellular while for Mobile Devices it went to Pradeep Jain from Karbonn Mobile. Amarjeet Batra from OLX took home the award for the ecommerce category, Cadbury India's Sidhhartha Mukherjee won the award for FMCG foods while Coke's Debabrate Mukherjee won it won FMCG Beverages. In FMCG Household products, Rohit Gyanchandani from Rohit Surfactants won the award. In the personal care category the award went to Darshan Patel from Vini Products.

"It is a recognition of our effort to achieve leadership in all that we have - print, television, radio and online," Vineet Jain from Bennett, Coleman & Co, thanked the IAA on receiving the Media Person of the year award.

The CEO of the year award went to Arundhati Bhattacharya, from SBI. Punya Prasun Bajpai won the News Anchor of the year award while Aroon Purie became the Editor of the year. Uday Shankar was declared the media game changer of the year. The brand visionary of the year award went to Hrithik Roshan and Shraddha Kapoor. CVL Srinivas was the media agency head of the year while Prasoon Joshi was named the advertising agency head of the year.

"What is it that someone, from erstwhile private sector and is now in public service, can say that will be of any interest to any of your present here. I realized that in some way what we do in public service and politics is not at all dissimilar to what you do as marketers and advertisers. Based on my experiences, I saw that to talk to the Indian voters as well as consumer, we must remember three things. Firstly, we must remember that the Indian consumer is an emotional consumer, secondly it is a relational consumer and thirdly he is a 'paisa wasool' consumer,"explained Jayant Sinha, Minister of State, Finance.

Kaushik Roy, president, brand strategy & marketing communication, Reliance Industries Limited, announced the Hall of Fame award to I Venkat, director, Eenadu Group along with the Srinivasan K Swamy and the Chief Guest - Jayant Sinha.