JWT Delhi reaps a golden harvest at PMAA

JWT Delhi has won four golds and a bronze at the Promotion Marketing Awards of Asia (PMAA) 2005 with Pepsi’s ‘Toss Ka Boss’ campaign winning gold in four categories – Best Multi-Disciplined Campaign, Best Sponsorship Tie-in Campaign, Best Campaign in India and the most coveted Best in Asia category, while 7UP’s Quawaali campaign bagging a bronze in the ‘Best Brand Building’ category.

The agency is particularly pleased over ‘Toss ka Boss’ being awarded the Best Campaign in Asia for 2005, after a spirited debate among 19 Judges from five countries.

The campaign was created at a time when JWT needed to develop the promotions for Pepsi India in 2004. It was supposed to leverage Pepsi‘s sponsorship of the Indian cricket team for the ICC Champions Trophy matches, played in England in circa 2004.

In India, where cricket is a religion, there are over 450 brands associated with the sport, creating considerable clutter and mixed messages. Naturally, almost every type of activity has been executed by the brands concerned. What was needed was the emergence of a market leader campaign.

JWT played on the fact that the then Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly had a penchant of losing the crucial toss to decide which team would bat first. The campaign leveraged this insight with a multi-level promotion that accessed cricket fans in India across stores, food outlets, schools, Internet, a travelling road show and cinemas.

Over 850,000 customers purchased multiple promotion Pepsi bottles and the brand achieved the highest market share among all cola brands in India.

The 7UP Quawaali campaign, meanwhile, was a landmark in the history of the brand. Year 2004 saw the brand move up steadily both in terms of volume as well consumer scores with Fido as its brand mascot. Earlier consumer survey had said, while Fido, as a character, was always aspirational and well loved, he was not engaging enough. Youth consumers found Fido to be a little unreal and not in relatable situations.

The task before JWT was to move him away from an artificial cartoon world into the real one. The attempt was to Indianise the context of Fido’s life from unfamiliar Western settings and make him a cool youth icon. JWT also had the mandate of providing a scale and a grand stature to the brand, and reinterpret Fido’s ‘street smartness’ as jugaad – the ability to outsmart in the simplest way and always get what he wants.

The idea was to project Fido as ‘cool’ not only because he does different things, but also because he does things differently in cool Indian style. JWT, therefore, came up with the ‘Andaaz sabse cool’ campaign with quawaali being the first execution of this campaign.

Besides a heavy media burst across channels with a 40 sec TVC, there was a fully integrated 360 degree activation plan. The on-air activity was supported with out-of-box on-ground activation to maximise impact.

The campaign idea was amplified through a high impact, innovative launch conference styled like a Bollywood movie premier at a multiplex. Followed by launch of the first Fido chowk in key cities – a 12 feet statue of Fido on a horse with a 7UP bottle in one hand and an opener in the other. Plus, there were others innovative promotions at high traffic intersections, youth hangouts. There was another tie-up with Yahoo, popularising Fido mantras through web & wireless.

7UP today is the fastest growing brand in the bottled soft drink market, growing aggressively in double digits. Consumer imagery scores are outstanding, the best ever in the history of the brand and all feedback has been very positive, the agency says.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!