Ogilvy India and BBDO win at Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards 2011

The results of the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards 2011 are out, and Ogilvy India and BBDO India are the only two Indian agencies to have won accolades at the event. India had a total of 19 shortlists this year, of which 10 have been converted into victories.

The award ceremony was held at the Pudong-Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai, China.

Ogilvy India has won its three gold awards for three different campaigns, across categories. The first is for its BlackBerry Boys campaign for Vodafone Essar in the Most Effective Use of Advertising category. The other two golds are both in the category of Best Insights/Strategic Thinking. One is for the agency's campaign titled 'How ringing the bell can reduce violence against women' for Breakthrough: Bring Human Rights Home, and the other is for a campaign titled 'How we sold chocolate bars equalling more than 2.5 times the Great Wall' for Cadbury Kraft India.

The agency's three silver awards were for three different campaigns. One was in the category of Most Effective Use of Sponsorship and Event Marketing for a campaign for Hindustan Unilever, titled Project Swasthya Chetna. The other two silver awards won by Ogilvy India were in the Best Sustained Success category; one for its Dove-Damage Expert campaign for Unilever India, and the other for the campaign 'Pulsar & Stunting: Creating India's bestselling bike' for Bajaj Auto.

Commenting on the victories, Rajiv Rao, national creative director, Ogilvy India, tells afaqs! what helped the agency clinch these wins. "Our wins at the AME Awards were about great ideas that were sold in a great way. That's a potent combination," he says.

According to Rao, it's a good idea to gauge and felicitate the actual effectiveness of an idea in the market. "It's a 'great-creativity-meets-the-real-world' kind of situation as the awards reflect on how much business an idea has generated for a brand and how the numbers have changed for the client," he adds.

For BBDO India, it was truly a razor smooth success story as the WALS (Women Against Lazy Stubble) ad campaign for P&G brand Gillette fetched the agency all its glory. The same campaign has won one gold, one silver and two bronze awards in four different categories.

The gold is in the category of Best Marketing Campaign for National Brand Development, and the silver is in the category of Best Integrated Marketing campaign. The WALS campaign has won the agency two bronze awards in the categories of Best Insights/Strategic Thinking, and Best Ideas.

Josy Paul shares his thoughts on how the Gillette campaign has fared so well. "When we started out with it, we had no idea that it would become such a big movement," he enthuses. "It was a complete consumer engagement programme, more than just an ad," he says.

Paul continues that the wins mean a lot as the AME awards select winners based on several unique indices such as actual sales figures and generation of brand equity in the market.

About the winning Women Against Lazy Stubble campaign, Paul jokes, "Well, putting my money on women really paid off!"

Established in 1994, the AME Awards recognise marketing strategies that are both creative, as well as successful. This year, the theme was 'Unpacking Effectiveness' and was meant to inspect the meaning of 'effectiveness' in the context of today's modern marketing environment.

For the record, AME is a joint venture between the International Advertising Festival and Haymarket.