Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards: India has 19 shortlists; Ogilvy leads with seven

Shortlists for the Asian Marketing Effectiveness (AME) Awards 2011, have been announced. Indian advertising and media agencies have a total of 19 shortlists to their credit.

Ogilvy India leads the pack with seven shortlists, followed by BBDO India, which has five. Mindshare India has received three shortlists, followed by DDB Mudra, with two. Dentsu Communications and RK Swamy Media Group have one shortlist each.

Ogilvy India's popular 'BlackBerry Boys' campaign for Vodafone Essar has received a shortlist in the Most Effective Use of Advertising category. The agency's campaign, Damage Expert for Dove (Unilever India), has been shortlisted in the Best Sustained Success category. In the same category, Ogilvy India has another shortlist for its 'Pulsar and Stunting - Creating India's best-selling sports bike' campaign for Bajaj Auto. Lastly, the agency's Project Swasthya Chetna campaign for Hindustan Unilever has been shortlisted in the Most Effective Use of Sponsorship and Event Marketing category.

BBDO India, the agency with the second highest number of shortlists, owes all its glory to the WALS (Women Against Lazy Stubble) campaign for P&G (Gillette) as the same campaign has been shortlisted in five different categories.

The categories include Best Integrated Marketing Campaign, Best Marketing Campaign for National Brand Development, Most Effective Use of Public Relations, Best Insights/Strategic Thinking, and Best Ideas.

Mindshare India has the third highest number of shortlists. Of the three shortlists it has garnered, two are for the agency's Use Mobile Save Paper campaign for Idea Cellular - one in the Most Effective Use of Interactive Marketing category and the other in the Most Effective Use of Eco/Green Marketing category. The third shortlist that Mindshare India has received is in the Best Brand Loyalty Marketing category for Hindustan Unilever's 'This Beauty Never Sleeps' campaign.

DDB Mudra has been shortlisted in two categories for the same brand - Volkswagen India Sales. The agency's campaign, Innovations for Everyone, has been shortlisted in the Best Insights/Strategic Thinking category, while the German Engineering Made in India campaign has been shortlisted in the Most Effective Use of Advertising category.

Dentsu Communications and RK Swamy Media Group have received one shortlist each in the same category -- that is, Most Effective Use of Eco/Green Marketing. While the 'Save our Tigers' campaign for Aircel has pulled in this shortlist for Dentsu Communications, the 'Siemens Ecovatives' campaign for Siemens has done so for RK Swamy Media Group.

It may be noted that the AME Awards were established in 1994 to recognise creative and successful marketing strategies across all industry verticals. This year, the theme is 'Unpacking Effectiveness' and is meant to inspect what 'effectiveness' means in the modern day marketing environment.

For the record, AME is a joint venture between Haymarket and the International Advertising Festival. This year, the awards ceremony is scheduled to be a two-day event that will be conducted on May 12-13 at the Pudong Shangri-La hotel in Shanghai, China.