Maddies 2020 jury meet: Campaigns with effective mobile marketing strategies shortlisted

The jury session for the 6th edition of the exchange4media Mobile Awards – The Maddies 2020 – took place virtually on Friday, 6th November 2020. Among the 400 entries received, 255 were shortlisted for the main jury session through an online screening assessment by the assessment jury.

e4m Mobile Awards: The Maddies aims to acknowledge and recognize all marketing stories that employ an effective mobile marketing strategy in India. These awards are open to all industries linked to Mobile Marketing (Clients, Creative, Media Agencies, Digital Agencies and Publishers, etc).

Gracing the Jury Chair this year was none other than Ravinder Takkar, MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea. The other grand jury members were Arjun Ravi Kolady, Head of Sales-India, Spotify; Abhishek Joshi, Head of Marketing and Business Partnerships, MX Player; Chandramohan Mehra; Chief Marketing Officer, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance; Debosmita Majumder, Head of Marketing, PR, CRM, Porsche India, Skoda Volkswagen Group; Deepika Warrier, Chief Marketing Officer, DIEGO India; Hitu Chawla, CMO, Microsoft India; Kashyap Vadapalli Chief Marketing Officer & Business Head, Pepperfry; Manish Dubey, Chief Marketing Officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited; Nipun Kaushal, Chief Marketing Officer- Marketing & Corporate Communications, PNB MetLife India Insurance; Nitin Pai, CMO and Chief Strategy Officer, Tata Elxis; Naiyya Saggi, Founder, BabyChakra; Pallavi Singh, Director Marketing, BMW India; Prasanna Rai, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, Praval Singh, VP Marketing & Customer Experience, Zoho; Ruchika Malhan Varma, Chief Marketing Officer, Future Generali India Insurance Company Limited; Ruchira Jaitly, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – India, HMD Global; Ravi Santhanam, CMO, HDFC Bank; Sidharth Parashar, President, Pricing & Investments - India, GroupM India; Santosh Iyer, Vice-President, Sales & Marketing and Member of the Leadership Team, Mercedes-Benz India, Siddhartha Butalia, Chief Marketing Officer, AirAsia India; Sonya Sahni, Director, CEO, Pomelo Digital India; Sonia Notani, Chief Marketing Officer, IndiaFirst Life; Sheraz Hasan, Head Marketing – India & South Asia, Amazon Web Services; Ramakant Khandelwal, Chief Marketing Officer, PAYBACK India; Tarun Bhagat, Brand Director-Pepsi ,Gatorade and Aquafina, PepsiCo; Virat Khullar, Assistant Vice President & Group Head - Marketing, ‎Hyundai; Vandana Chamaria, Head of Business Marketing, Google; and Udit Malhotra, Head of Marketing, MG Motor India.

The best minds in the digital marketing space debated on who should make the final cut with intense discussions for over 5 hours. For the virtual jury process, there were co-jury chairs appointed and the jury members selected for each of the teams were broken up into different Zoom rooms to judge different categories. However, the final call was taken by the main jury chair Mr. Takkar if a conclusion couldn’t be drawn.

The parameters for judging who deserves to walk away with the accolades were: Concept, Innovation, Execution and Results.

The jury members were drawn to campaigns by entrants who used mobile phones to develop their campaign, generate data, for innovation and to garner campaign results.

Some categories saw clear winners in those who met the criteria and the overall objective of the brand. However, some of the discussions led to intense conversations on whether they should mark them on the basis of their mobile innovation and strategy or on the overall integrated marketing campaign conceptualized.

Campaigns that showcased a relevant and niche marketing approach and conceptualized something distinctive were payed close attention to.

A data-driven approach, brand recall, results and the objective obtained were taken note of while
selecting the winners. The jury also gave prominence to campaigns that used mobile primarily to ensure reach, scale and call to action by the consumers. The sheer size and the scale the campaigns were able to achieve were taken into account. In some categories, amplification through user generated content stood out for the grand jury members.

Sharing his sentiments on the jury process this year and the entrants, Jury Chair Ravinder Takkar said, “We had an excellent set of jury members and marketing experts onboard. We had excellent entries this year and went through all of them. There was great work done by every company who submitted. For me it was a certainly a learning experience to see how new techniques are being used. There were clever strategies used by marketers across the country to deliver their message and build a connect with the people. In terms of selecting the winners, everyone who has entered is a winner but at the end we had to select some noteworthy ones. We, of course, had great debates, a lot of discussions, sometimes disagreements and sometimes combined agreements as well. All in all, it was a great day and in the end we decided several winners which hopefully everybody will be happy with. Congratulations to all the entrants and the winners. I look forward to announce those winners in the coming days. Thanks to exchange4media for making it a wonderful day for all of us.”

The final awardees will be unveiled on the day of the virtual Awards Ceremony on 24th November 2020.