Ogilvy's Kunal Sinha wins Best Paper Award at MRSI seminar

Kunal Sinha, vice-president - Discovery, O&M India, has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the 15th Market Research Society of India (MRSI) seminar, which concluded in New Delhi on March 27. Sinha's award-winning paper - titled An Anthropologist in the Advertising World - was presented as part of a session on Methodology, and was the only paper presented this year by a non-research agency. The paper that won the first runner-up award was titled Jack in the Tiffin Box, presented by Seemeen Khan, Sangeeta Gupta (both of AC Nielsen ORG MARG) and Subhranshu Rout (of GSK Consumer Healthcare). The second runner-up award went to a paper titled Living Without Fear, presented by Sangeeta Gupta, Madhumita Chakraborty (both of AC Nielsen ORG MARG) and V Vasanthakumar (of ABN Amro).

This year's seminar - which was based on the theme, Consumer Choice and the Growth Challenge - attracted 67 papers in all, of which 15 were nominated for presentations at the seminar, attended by over two hundred delegates from the MR, advertising and media fraternities. The jury that decided on this year's Best Paper comprised industry veterans such as Pratik Pota (Bharti Cellular), Sumita Sen (Dalmia Consumer Care), Kashmira Chadha (Seagram India), Binu Jacob (Nestlé), Anand Singh (Reckitt Benckiser) and Ruchira Roy (ICICI Bank).

Speaking about his award-winning paper, Sinha says, "The paper essentially discussed a new methodology for gleaning consumer insights. The argument we made was that as consumers are not necessarily articulate, the approach to understanding consumers and consumer segments has be broadened for marketers to fully comprehend consumer mindset. The paper demonstrated how marketers could derive insights on consumer behaviour by looking at the media they consume. This is the first time that I entered a paper at an MRSI convention, and I'm happy my paper has picked up the award." © 2004 agencyfaqs!