JWT, Bates141 win at Jay Chiat awards

JWT and Bates141 have won a gold and a bronze respectively at the recently held Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence.

JWT won a gold for its 'Teach India' campaign in the category of 'Social Strategy: Best Strategic Thinking for Social Impact'. It presented a case study titled 'When over two million unlettered Indian kids said 'Jai Ho''. Sushobhan Mukherjee, vice president and strategic planning director JWT, made a presentation and also received the award. Teach India was amongst three case studies globally, which was invited to make a presentation.

Dhunji S Wadia, managing partner, JWT said, "Teach India is perhaps the largest programme about transforming the lives of disadvantaged Indian children. If you thought you couldn't teach, we would train you. If you worried about getting students, we provided eager students waiting for teachers, a full pipeline.  If distance was an issue, we matched your location to the NGO and pupils near you. Conventional thinking and past social programmes had always called for volunteers to teach. This noble thought has been oft repeated, with marginal success. 'Let's Learn to Teach' was our clarion call. All we asked from volunteers was two hours a week. Who could refuse that? Perhaps not too many. No programme has even come close to Teach India's ambition and results."

Bates141 won the bronze in the 'Campaign for a new brand' category. Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer, Bates141 said, "The campaign for Virgin Mobile is a culturally brave one. For the first time on national television, there was advertising whose storylines and protagonists were not all whitewashed in goodness. Virgin Mobile realized that in the celebration of ‘40 is the new 20’, the 20 something were being squeezed out. We set out to build a real youth brand in the country of youthful brands and managed to create something that the Indian youth identified with."

Sandeep Pathak, CEO, Bates141 said about the victory, "Our campaign for Virgin Mobile has been consistently delivering results. Its an honour to win at the Jay Chiat awards, which celebrate some great strategic thinking. The Virgin Mobile campaign has consistently won over the last one year - at the Effies and at the Asian Marketing Effectiveness (AME) awards."

The Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence recognize brilliant strategic thinking which have resulted in path-breaking creative execution. A total of 37 cases were awarded out of 187 entries and 46 shortlists at the awards which concluded during Advertising Week in New York on September 22.