Bates 141 and Mindshare grab the Yahoo! Big Idea Chair for Indian Panga League

The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair, which was so far part of the Effies each year, had its first outing as a standalone event this year in Mumbai. This year, the purple chair went to Bates 141 and Mindshare for their work on the campaign 'Indian Panga League' for Virgin Mobile. The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair winning campaign was selected on creativity in relation to the concept, originality of the marketing initiative, relevance to the brand and integration of marketing campaigns. Other winners for the evening included Webchutney, Tribal DDB, Creativeland Asia, Interface and Madison. 

On the win, Sonal Dabral, managing partner, India and head of creative for Asia, Bates 141, said, “We are quite delighted with the award for this particular campaign as digital was the only medium used for this particular campaign. With every major brand sharing a pie during IPL on other mediums, we worked on the 'Indian Panga League' for the digital space, which is where our target audience resides. The campaign, which began in April 2010, spread through word-of-mouth and continues to be shared even now.”

Pointing out that the agency does not differentiate between mediums of communications,  Gowthaman Ragothaman, leader, South Asia, Mindshare, explained that the win justified their decisions. “At Mindshare, we do not differentiate between mediums for communicating the big idea. In fact, over the period of time with the entry of new digital devices, we have become platform-neutral,” he added. 

In the category of Best Digital Brand Solution, Creativeland Asia (creative and media) won gold for its Hippo's 'Consumers Become Inventory Trackers' campaign, while Webchutney (creative) and Madison (media) won the silver for Tata Tea's 'Jaago Re' campaign. 

The gold went to Interface Business Solutions (creative and media) for its Tata Docomo 'Diet SMS' campaign in the Best Rich Media Ad category. Webchutney (creative) and Madison (media) again won the silver for its work on Airtel 'Songcatcher. 

In  the Best Engagement Idea category, Creativeland Asia (creative and media) won its second gold for the Hippo campaign. Bates 141 (creative) and Mindhshare (media) won silver for Virgin Mobile's 'Indian Panga League' in this category. 

In the Best Mobile Solution category, Tribal DDB (creative) and Mindshare (media) bagged the gold for their campaign for Idea Cellular, 'Idea tree - Use mobile save paper'. In the same category, Mindshare also won the silver for its work on Quaker Oats' 'Mission for India Healthy Heart'. 

No winners or nominations were announced in the Best Creative Search category.  

On the awards announced for the evening, Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman,. Creativeland Asia, noted, “It is quite strange that the top award – Big Idea Chair goes to a silver award winner, as opposed to the gold winner in the same category.”

Elaborating on his case study for Hippo which won two gold awards, he said, “We wanted to solve a very technical problem the brand was facing, and the solution we came up was purely a digital activation. In this project, we  used crowdsourcing to address the problem using twitter. Moreover, I think this is the only project where every tweet that has yielded a positive RoI for the brand. On date, we have around 1,300 people who are tracking inventories for the brand across the country. Hence, I believe this is the most innovative digital solutions idea to come out of this country.”  

On the awards organised exclusively for the digital advertising space, Max Hegerman, president, Tribal DDB, who was also part of the jury for the awards, noted that it is a significant addition to the Indian digital advertising space with these awards. “The entries we received for this year's awards are specially crafted for the digital space, which we hope will continue to increase in the years to come. It was good to see that most of the entries were good pieces of integration across the wide spectrum of digital mediums,” he explained. 

Another jury member, Kunal Jeswani, country head, Ogilvy One, observed that with the awards being held separately, they could come across a lot of interactive entries as opposed to integrated campaigns which are usually entered for awards. On the quality of entries received, he said, “Some of the entries were good, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of presentation.”

Karl Gomes, co-founder, AgencyDigi, pointed out that the awards was more organised with the jury being given only the short-listed entries to judge. “Though the ideas presented for the entries were     good, the content packaging and production for communications as well for jury presentation needs to improve. Moreover, it is difficult to get away with scam work in this space since it can be measured and duly noted,” he observed.

Anil K Nair, managing partner, Digital Law & Kenneth, wished that the quantity and quality of entries increase substantially next year. “If you look at it, there was not much participation from mainline agencies which needs to improve as mass participation will improve critical mass. Since the quality of entries depend on the media spends and given the spends we have in India for digital advertising, the quality of entries received were encouraging,” he added.