afaqs! news bureau
Advertising

India shines six times over at the YoungGuns

India’s tally at the awards for young creative professionals and students includes one gold, one bronze and four silver bullets

India has won six bullets at the YoungGuns Awards 2008 – one gold, four silver and a single bronze. Reason enough to smile?

The YoungGuns are open to creative professionals and students who are under the age of 30. The eight-year-old awards platform celebrates work emerging from around the world. The focus is not necessarily on work for big brands or with huge budgets, but on ideas that rock. Craig Davis, ex-CCO, JWT, was the jury chairman.

India has a total of six bullets and four finalists. Contract Advertising picked up a gold in the Print Charity and Public Service category and a silver in the Copywriting Campaigns category for Family Name, a campaign against female foeticide created for Aadhar Association, an NGO. Contract Advertising is also ranked No. 8 Agency of the Year.

Anshumani Khanna, creative group head, Contract Advertising, who worked on the creative, says, "The brief was to be hard-hitting in communicating the message." The copy clinically explains, in seven steps, how the abortion of a half-developed foetus is conducted.

India shines six times over at the YoungGuns
The creative persons – Khanna, Manan Mistry and Vimal Singh – who worked on the campaign have also been ranked No. 12 in the YGA 2008 Young Creatives Rankings.

JWT took two silver bullets – one in the Art Direction Campaign category and the other in the Outdoor Campaign category – for 50 Cent/ Bob Marley/ Jim Morrison/ Madonna done for MW Com India (Rolling Stone magazine). Ashish Pathak and Shashank Jha, who worked on this campaign, have been ranked No. 24 in the Young Creatives Rankings.

India shines six times over at the YoungGuns
The other agency that took a couple of bullets is O&M – a silver and a bronze. The silver bullet was in the Newspaper Campaigns category for Debate1/ Debate2/ Debate3 for Vodafone Essar, created by Santosh Sonawane and Gururaj Rao. Rao has been ranked No. 35.

O&M bit the bronze bullet for Neo Sports' Gas, which was the creation of Ramamurthy S, Gururaj Rao and Sweta Ghorawat.

The finalists were Monuments for Cox & Kings in the Newspaper Campaigns category by Saatchi & Saatchi, created by Roshni Kavina and Luv Kalla; SNC Planner created for SNC Jewels by JWT’s Simone Patrick, Hetal Ajmera, Goral Ajmera and Jaskaran Kapany; and two campaigns from O&M: Swimming Pool (HSBC Corporate) by Shirin Johari and Tension-Gas/ Rusty Nail/ Presence (Neo Sports) by Ramamurthy S, Gururaj Rao and Sweta Ghorawat.

YoungGuns will launch two new initiatives early in 2009 – the YoungGuns Digital Awards and the YoungGuns Foundation.

The YGAward 2008 Creative Brief for Virgin Unite.com will also be announced soon. Last year, Mudra won the Creative Brief on globalcurrent.org.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com