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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 here.
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