Effie Awards celebrates excellence in effective advertising with panache

The Effie Awards 2009 that celebrates excellence in effective advertising was concluded amidst much cheering from the ‘gang in black’ O&M, which reclaimed the Agency of the Year Award after losing it to JWT last year. There was much cheering in the Ogilvy camp with Piyush Pandey equally enjoying and encouraging his team’s stupendous performance, courtesy the phenomenal success of Vodafone’s Zoozoos campaign. There was also much cheering from team JWT for its work for The Times of India and team Lowe for the successful Jaago Re! campaign.

The Awards were held at a glittering ceremony in Mumbai on December 16 at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse. The night provided a platform for professionals and recognises the best talent in the industry. Further, it is also the only Award that is given to the agency and also to the client.

Bhaskar Das, President of Ad Club, said, “Effies is an award which recognises advertising that generates results. The response to Effie awards has been overwhelming this year.”

Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar Universal, and Chairperson of the Effies Committee, said, “The year 2009 was supposed to be a bad year by many in the industry. On the contrary, we received 20 per cent more entries this year. There were 34 judges comprising the best names in marketing in the country. These are the biggest advertising and marketing awards in the country.”

The Zoozoos dominated the show this year because of the out-of-the-box thinking by Rajiv Rao and his team, not to mention that Rao was the cynosure of all eyes as he kept going to the dais with his team very often to receive awards in various categories. So was JWT with its work on The Times of India. The Lowe team was also present in full force with Charles Cadell leading the team.

Talking about the performance, Arijit Ray, Executive VP and Head of Mudra, Mumbai said, “Mudra’s position has improved as compared to last year and that all the Mudra Group verticals have performed well this year. Our aim for next year is to be in the top five agencies.”

Llyod Mathias, Chief Marketing Officer, Tata Tele Services said that he had expected the Zoozoos to walk away with all the awards this year. “The work done for Zoozoos was a clutter-breaking in the segment.” Though he did add, “This does not pose any threat to any telecom player as the industry is large enough for all the players to participate.”