Not many planners attending Emvies will remember how it started: Sam Balsara

Not many planners attending Emvies will remember how it started. It was part of a three-day India Advertising Festival held at the National Sports Club of India (NSCI), Mumbai. It spread over three days, with thousands of participants each day. Back then, the event was not known as Emvies.

The name emerged several years later. The three-day festival at NSCI had three shows – one evening reserved for what was already well established, ABBYS; another for what we call EFFIES now; and a third for what we presently call Emvies

We were expected to line up at the NSCI as early as 5:00 p.m. to be served a box of samosas and cake as a snack before the show started. Using the logic that nothing works on an empty stomach. Dinner was still hours away.

In one of the subsequent years we took the bold step of giving Media Awards an independent identity and called it Emvies. Yet another innovation which I greatly admired was that the shortlisted cases were to be presented by a team representing both client and agency to a live audience which included 3 or 4 senior marketing people as judges. 

Initially this started at Rangsharda Auditorium near St Xavier’s College and then moved to Wellingkar Auditorium. This was the most innovative part of the selection process and hopefully spread some learning to the media community, not just on content but also on presentation styles and techniques, on which they were lacking compared to their more savvy advertising colleagues. 

Who knew that media would one day dominate discussions at AAAI and hit the headlines over several days in ET? To the best of my knowledge, no media awards anywhere in the world follow this practice of live presentations by the agency/client team. Although it was a significant challenge, we managed to pull it off. We now conduct these presentations online post-COVID, but I'm curious about the viewership.

Most often in the early years, it was Lever that won the “Client of the Year” Award. One year Cadbury, now Mondelez, created a major upset, though not a large advertiser, pipped Lever to win the title. Vodafone has won "Client of the Year" twice, largely due to their iconic Zoo-zoos campaign, which still resonates today. Other notable winners have been Tata Docomo, Tata Tea Gold, Pepsi, Asian Paints, Times of India, Pidilite, and Ariel.

I look forward to being at the 25th edition of EMVIES (March 28, 2025) and seeing what new gizmos the organisers have in store for us. My hearty congratulations to the entire media industry for conceiving and supporting Emvies and for seeing it reach the milestone of the 25th edition.

The author, Sam Balsara, is the founder and chairman of Madison World, a leading Indian-owned communications group.