Leo Burnett
Leo Burnett wins awards galore at AAAI Awards
MUMBAI: Amidst a high attendance of advertising and marketing celebrities, the AAAI ( Advertising Agencies Association of India ) gave away 124 awards across 16 categories.
Leo Burnett stole the show with 23 awards, followed by Lowe Lintas which bagged a total of 17 awards.
The 10th edition of the AAAI awards, held on 3 December, in Mumbai, had Publicis Group chairman and CEO Maurice Levy as the chief guest for the evening.
McCann Erickson and Rediffusion DY&R jointly won the prestigious ‘Campaign of the year’ Silver Awards for Coca-Cola and Airtel respectively; while J Walter Thompson bagged the bronze for UB Exports.
In the Press category, the ‘Best of the Best’ award went to Leo Burnett for Santuary. The ‘Best of the Best’ award for television went to Lowe Lintas for Saint Gobain. McCann Erickson won the ‘Best of the Best’ award in the radio category for Coke and also for outdoor (Sweetex).
The ‘Star Advertiser of the Year’ award was given to Saint Gobain for consistently promoting excellence in advertising. The `Copywriter of the Year’ award was bagged by Agnello Dias of Leo Burnett.
A new award instituted by one of the sponsors Star was the ‘Star News Peoples choice award’ which was awarded on the base of an extensive contest conducted by Star News. This was done by inviting viewers to send in their nominations and the winner emerged by a large margin; it being the Saint Gobain commercial created by Lowe Lintas.
Speaking on the occasion, Madison Communications CMD Sam Balsara said, ” The AAAI awards have completed a good ten years and in its tenth year, we have decided to pause and review. Its time to relaunch the AAAI awards in a new avatar.”
The key changes that the association affected are as follows:
Radio and outdoor given their due as the awards included both these mediums entries too.
The reference period for the awards has been changed from January – December to July – June. This change has been incorporated to allow the first half of the year also being judged and awarded at the awards, allowing fresher pieces of work.
Jury member for the first time were taken to an off-site location and judging was completed in two days.
Panel also incorporated a new award titled ‘Best of Best’ for each category. (Print, Radio, TV, Outdoor)
The chairman of the awards, Mudra Communications CEO and MD Madhukar Kamat closed the evening by calling 2003-2004, ” A record year.”
All said and done, it was an enjoyable fare.
MUMBAI: Looking to leverage the increasing influence and role that financial players across the globe are having as drivers of the consumerism revolution, advertising major Leo Burnett is launching a specialist unit LeoFinancial.
According to Leo Burnett chairman and CEO Arvind Sharma, there is a major opportunity this scenario offers: “To manage the complexity of brands and offerings and appeal meanigfully to consumers, today’s financial sector players need not only credentials, scale and financial brilliance, they also need astute marketing. Agencies partnering clients in managing financial brands need to put together teams that understand finance, government regulatory policies, consumer behaviour, brand architechture and communication – all the same time. Looking at this need, we have launched LeoFinancial.”
Sharma asserts that LeoFinancial’s team of brand strategists and creatives will be delivering simultaneously on the twin challenges that financial sector players face – to move very rapidly in a very fast paced market; and while doing that still be thinking strategically and creatively to build strong long-term financial brands.
LeoFinancial’s first major campaign that’s breaking is for UTI Mutual Funds, a company release states. The campaign’s tagline is ‘Let’s plan to be rich’.
