NEW DELHI: Aaj Tak has bagged the silver trophy for the best media campaign of the year at the ABBY Awards 2003. Akhil Mishra bagged the best actor award for Aaj Tak campaign and Pradeep Sarkar of Apocalypso Filmworks won the best director awards for the Aaj Tak TVC campaign.

Speaking to indiantelevision.com, veteran ad film maker Pradeep Sarkar says: "The Aajtak team gave us an exhaustive brief and total freedom and liberty to think of the concept. They wanted us to be contemporary but refrain from being newsy. The themes we developed was about the issues facing today's society."

Commenting on the channel’s latest achievement, Aajtak CEO G Krishnan was quoted in a press release as saying: “This is yet again an example of the creativity and uniqueness in presentation that we maintain. We are thankful to our viewers, advertisers and other associates who have supported us all along in our endeavours to make Aaj Tak the best news channel in the Indian sub-continent.”

The communication objective of the TVC campaign was to showcase Aaj Tak’s position as an eye-opener and opinion creator through relevant and credible news. The concept of the advertisement had to appeal to the viewers, and since humour has universal appeal, Aaj Tak looked at situations where it could bring out this serious facet of the brand with an underlying sense of humour.

Perhaps, this was the reason why the O&M creative whizkids gave a standing ovation to the film maker Sarkar when he walked up to the stage to receive the award.

Talking about the ad concept, Krishnan further added: “The challenge was to highlight Aaj Tak’s uniqueness of providing credible news at the earliest. The idea of using a black and white, humorous and old style juxtaposed with contemporary themes was to emphasize the changes that it makes in our lives. The ABBY award is a sure sign of the appreciation and success that the ads have achieved."

"If we had used normal colour, it would have looked like any normal documentary. By using black-n-white background, we managed to raise the curiosity of viewers!" says Sarkar.

ABBY awards are considered to be the most prestigious awards in the advertising industry and around 2400 entries were vying for 17 awards in various categories.