Rubecon steals a march at Chennai Ad Club awards

agencyfaqs! News Bureau

CHENNAI

The 24th Madras Advertising Club Awards was interesting in more ways than one. First, creative hotshop Rubecon walked away with the honour of the Agency of the Year award, piping stalwarts like HTA, O&M and Contract. Second, though the number of participants had increased this year, there was a dip in the number of winners. Last but not the least, the awards ceremony itself was designed on the Kaun Banega Crorepati format. While the function was christened, Kaun Banega CAT (Chennai Advertising Triumph), the anchor asked computerji to flash the names of the winners in the familiar Amitabh Bachchan style.

But first things first. Chennai-based Rubecon stole the show by amassing as many as 180 points, and being declared as the agency of the year. The agency won bronze and silver medals in various categories such as the ColorPlus ad, under the best product section, for saregama.com, under the best cinema advertising segment.

HTA Chennai followed Rubecon, with 170 points. Among its award-winning campaigns was the Ford Ikon ad, which got it a bronze in the over 30 seconds TV commercial category; a silver medal for the Aquafina campaign, under the cinema advertising section; and again a silver medal for the Pepsi door-to-door campaign in Tamil, featuring matinee idol Madhavan.

Lowe Lintas followed HTA to claim the third spot. The agency bagged a gold and silver medal for its Wings campaign, in the TVC vernacular category. The agency, which wound up with 105 points, also won a couple of bronze medals in other categories.

However, out of the 37 categories, there were quite a few in which the nominees did not win any awards at all, while in some of them, it was just a bronze or a silver. The former creative head of Contract Advertising, Ravi Deshpande, who was the chief judge of the contest, in a video message said, "Though the works were interesting, most of them had enough room for improvement.''

Among the other prominent winners was Avigna Technologies, which won a gold in the multimedia programmes category for its work on the Hindustan Lever brand, Lakme. Avigna had devised an innovative chain of real-time photo-capture and cosmetic trial kiosks for the cosmetics giant. Avigna also bagged a gold in the Web site category, for designing a Web site for Saregama India Ltd.

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