Aditya Chatterjee
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Orchard wins a Lotus for work on HIV prevention

Orchard’s positive take on AIDS prevention wins the AAAI-Ad Fest Young Lotus Workshop Contest

The Orchard team has won the The AAAI-AdFest Young Lotus Workshop Contest, and will soon be on its way to Thailand to participate in AdFest Asia. Besides the winning work being the official Indian entry at the AdFest Young Lotus Workshop, the team will also be guests at the awards function to be held in Pattaya.

Any AIDS campaign takes the beaten path of death, depression and doom. And that’s why the Orchard team wanted to try something different for the contest. Creative Director K M Ayappa and art director Mark Flory of Orchard, Bangalore had their task cut out.

“Our national creative director Thomas Xavier suggested that we adopt a different strategy to talk about AIDS prevention,” says Ayappa. And that seeded the idea of talking about hope and not helplessness. “People don’t need another clever ad that talks about how bleak the situation is,” says Ayappa. “We wanted to instill hope, instead.”

The headline of the print ad says: A Recent Study Reports That India Is Actually Winning Its Fight Against AIDS. And that’s without your help. The body copy then goes on to talk about the fall in the growth of HIV infections and quotes statistics in its favour. It urges people to volunteer and take the momentum forward by doing their bit.

A delighted Nitish Mukherjee, managing director, Orchard, says, “The craft of writing copy seems to have got lost. What our team has come up with is very different and refreshing. It is a work that brings hope.”

Agrees Ramesh Narayan, chairman, AAAI, Diamond Jubilee Celebration Committee. “There were 77 entries from all over the country. The theme of AIDS prevention was no doubt difficult and the ideas tended to be a bit repetitive. But it wasn’t too difficult to single out Orchard’s entry, because it took a very different view of the issue.”

On the jury were Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and national creative director, O&M, K V Sridhar, national creative director, Leo Burnett, and Narayan.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!

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