BMW's 'Don't Postpone Joy' bags top spot at IndIAA awards

Among the 16 winners are MRF's 'There's A Lot Riding On Us' campaign for the ICC World Cup and Hero MotoCorp's (Maestro and Pleasure) campaign for 'ISL -The Game'.

The first edition of IndIAA Awards, held at Mumbai's St. Regis Hotel on October 13, saw the best creative work being selected from amongst 500 entries. From the final shortlist of 76 nominees, 16 winners were chosen. Part of the gathering were advertising stalwarts, marketing teams and brand heads, along with the jury chairman, Harish Manwani, COO, Unilever and non-executive chairman, Hindustan Unilever, and other jury members Bhaskar Bhat (Titan), Sangeeta Pendurkar (Kellogg's India), B Sriram (State Bank of India) and Sanjeeb Chaudhuri (Standard Chartered Bank).

Earlier in the day, Dr. Subhash Chandra, chairman, Essel Group and Zee, spoke to Shankkar Aiyar, journalist-analyst-author on 'News Neutrality'. The insightful conversation saw Dr. Chandra talk about the basic concept of neutrality; the solution to compulsion of revenue versus competition; regulation of news gathering and vagueness of media ownership in India. Dr. Chandra also mentioned a new technological engine being put into place in Zee, which will track stories right from filing, so that there is control over biases.

Srinivasan Swamy, president, IAA India Chapter, said, "With the IndIAA Awards, IAA has added another interesting concept to its existing cache of clutter-breaking events. We attempted IndIAA awards as an experiment; we wanted to create a different way of awarding creativity. With the response to our call for entries and the turnout today, we know that this concept has been very well accepted. At the IAA Conversations preceding the awards, Dr. Subhash Chandra and Shankkar Aiyar, as expected, brought fresh perspective and deep insights around News Neutrality through the engaging session."

Pradeep Guha, chairman, IndIAA Awards Committee, added, "The IndIAA Award format ensured that 'ads for awards only' didn't come through and this itself was the differentiator."

Dr. Bhaskar Das, chairman, IAA Conversations, said, "Going against the grain, if need be, to deep dive into the most relevant industry topics has been the objective of IAA Conversations. Today's topic on News Neutrality follows the same trend."

Click here to see the list of winners.