O&M, BBDO, Lowe Lintas, FCB Ulka, among frontrunners at IndIAA Awards

The first edition of IndIAA Awards got off to a brilliant start with the best creative work being selected from amongst 500 entries. From the final shortlist of 76 nominees, 16 winners were chosen. The huge gathering at St. Regis Hotel saw advertising stalwarts and their agencies, marketing teams and brand heads in attendance.

Also present were Jury Chairman Harish Manwani, COO Unilever and Non-Executive Chairman, Hindustan Unilever and Jury members - Bhaskar Bhat (Titan), Sangeeta Pendurkar (Kellogg’s India), B. Sriram (State Bank of India), and Sanjeeb Chaudhuri (Standard Chartered Bank).

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 said, “The IndIAA Award format ensured that ‘ads for awards only’ didn’t come through and this itself was the differentiator.”

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 ranged from the basic concept of neutrality; the solution to compulsion of revenue v/s 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.

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.”

The IndIAA Awards were received by the Advertisers along with all the co-creators of the campaign, across Creative and Media Agencies and also included other agency partners from Digital, Events, PR, Activation etc.

Winners of the first IndIAA Awards: