boAt is the biggest winner at the afaqs! Marketers' Excellence Awards 2023

Many of India’s most powerful and well-recognised were in the running for metals in the third edition of the awards.

The latest edition of the afaqs! Marketers’ Excellence Awards unfolded at an engrossing ceremony held last evening at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. The stage glittered often when the unique ‘X’ trophy caught the arc lights as the winners walked up triumphantly to claim their rewards.

The 2023 edition of Marketers Excellence Awards were classified into 10 super categories and 49 categories. The super categories were: Ambient Media, All Media, Brand Activation, Content, Design, Digital, Influencer Marketing, Print, Social Media and Television.

According to Sreekant Khandekar, the cofounder and CEO of afaqs!, there was a surge in entries this year: “This has been most gratifying. We had to invite more jurors taking the number to 35 to handle the 65 per cent bump in the number of entries.” 

The aspiring brands were from across categories as well as from all corners of India. Some among them: Astral, Bingo Mad Angles, Bridgestone, Britannia, Diageo, Domino's, Google, Havells, Hershey, HRX, HSBC, Hyundai, ICICI Bank, IndiGo, Kotak Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Netflix, PepsiCo, Pernord Ricard, Reliance Retail and Vi.

boAt, a rapidly-growing India-based consumer electronics brand, grabbed the maximum number (10) of metals made up of six golds, two silvers and two bronze for its work across Ambient Media, Content and Digital categories. boAtNetflix Stream Edition campaign by boAt swept away the highest number of metals.

Amazon Mini TV, second on the list of the top metal acquirers, won three golds and four silvers for its work across Content, Digital, Influencer Marketing and Social Media categories.

Viacom 18 went home with three golds, two silvers and two bronze for its work in Content, Digital and Social Media.

The following three categories saw the highest participation:

Best Long Form Video (30 seconds and over): River Electric Scooter won the top spot for its campaign, ‘River - The One for Everything’. Watch the film here.

Best Brand Activation: Pernod Ricard India grabbed the gold for its experiential marketing campaign ‘The Chivas Tasting Experience’.

Best Topical Campaign: Britannia Industries won Gold for its AR-based contest campaign ‘Britannia Bourbon Football Friends’. Watch the film

The jury rated the entries on a 1-10 scale. Each entry was submitted for review to between three and six jurors. The average jury rating of all the entries (not just the winners) was 6.2/10, which showed that the overall standard of entries was high.

You can check the complete list of winners here.

The entries were judged by a 35-member jury of well-known names from the world of advertising, media and marketing, including:

Vivek Malhotra, India Today Group

Sunder Venketranam, VerSe Innovation

Sujay Rachh, Nuvama Group

Sudeep Chawla, Pidilite

Shuvadip Banerjee, ITC Limited

Sanjay Adesara, Adani Wilmar

Samir Sethi, Policy Bazaar

Sagar Gokhale, Qyuki Digital Media

Rohan Mehta, Kinnect

Ritu Sharda, Ogilvy India (North)

Ramanuj Shastry, Infectious Advertising

Rajat Abbi, Schneider Electric

Praveen Rao, SAP India

Prachi Bali, Saatchi & Saatchi Propagate

Paramjeet Singh Mehta, Asus India

Neville Bastawalla, Sports Business, Sony Pictures Networks India

Neha Tulsian, NH1 Design

Neeraj Joshi, Zee Studios

Lulu Raghavan, Landor & Fitch

Lalatendu Panda, Reliance SMART

Joy Mohanty, Dentsu Creative

Jayesh Ullattil, InMobi

Hemal Majithia, OktoBuzz

Gurpreet Singh, One Digital Entertainment

Gitanjali Saxena, Tata CLiQ Luxury

Dippak Khurana, Vserv AudiencePro

Chaaya Baradhwaaj, BC Web Wise

Atit Mehta, Byju’s

Ashish Bahl, DY Works

Aruna Daryanani, Amazon miniTV

Anindya Khare, Zee Media Corporation

Anindita Veluri, Adobe India

Aman Srivastava, Sony LIV

Akshay Kapoor, DLF Limited

Advait Gupt, Kulfi Collective