Pepper Creative Awards 2023 presented at a grand function

Bangalore-based Free Flow Creative Service bagged ‘Agency of the Year’ award and the Malayala Manorama Group won the ‘Advertiser of the year’ award.

The 17th edition of Pepper Creative Awards, a reputed and sought after creative awards in South India, was held at a glittering function at Crowne Plaza on December 8, 2023.

Mohammad Khan, founder of India’s advertising agencies- Rediffusion, Contract and Enterprise, was the chief guest at the award ceremony.  Raj Nair, former CEO and CCO, Madison BMB, represented the jury panel. 

Thiruvananthapuram-based Stark Communications bagged the award for the Best of Kerala and Chennai-based Mind Your Language won the Best of Tamil.  Special category award for Young Pepper was bagged by Freeflow Ideas Bangalore. Prominent agencies from Kerala such as Organic BPS, Push 360, Red Earth, PlainSpeak, Hammer, Capio Creatives and Ad India were among the other awardees. 

Pepper 2023 had a jury panel comprising 12 nationally and internationally acclaimed creative people who have judged many awards viz Cannes, One Show, AdAsia, Clio, Kyoorius, Goafest etc. The jury panel included Deepa Geethakrishnan, founder, MYO Brands Solutions; Priya Shivakumar, senior national creative director, Wunderman Thompson India; Harshada Menon, group creative director, DDB Mudra Group;  Raj Kamble, founder and CCO, Famous Innovations; Prathap Suthan, co-founder and CCO, Bang In The Middle; Abhijit Avasthi, founder, Sideways; Raj Nair, former CEO and CCO, Madison BMB; Burzin Mehta, chief creative officer, Gozoop Group; George Kovoor, CCO Wavemaker India; Joji Jacob, creative partner & Co-founder, BLKJ Havas, Singapore; Ashish Khazanchi, managing partner, Enormous and Anurag Agnihotri, managing partner (creative), Ogilvy West. 

K. Venugopal, chairman, Pepper Trust, said, “This year we received more than 500 entries from ad agencies, media, production houses, printers and photographers across South India.  This year also, all the entries were accepted online.”

“We did 1 round of online judging for shortlisting and one round offline judging at Mumbai, where the jury presented  had judged each shortlisted entry physically and selected the winners unanimously”, added P.K. Natesh, chairman, Pepper Awards 2023.