MAM
Triple A Awards: Lowe maxes, Contract follows with Quadrant getting three golds
It’s awards season in the advertising business. The first of them: the seventh edition of The Triple A Awards (in association with leading Indian television network Star India) got going last night at Mumbai’s Oberoi Hotel.
A lounge suit affair held by the poolside, it attracted head honchos from advertising right from JWT head Mike Khanna to RK Swamy’s Sreenivasan Swamy to Saatchi & Saatchi’s R.Shantakumar, Lowe Lintas’s Prem Mehta, Bates India’s Madhukar Kamath, Mudra’s Kaushik Roy, Madison’s Sam Balsara, and Canco’s and 3Aof I president Ramesh Narayan, and London-based art and creative guru Graham Fink and his partner Dierdre Allen of the Fink Tank.
Also present was O&M’s Piyush Pandey, which led Balsara who hosted the proceedings to remark that “I hope Piyush’s presence lays to rest any controversy that the media is trying to play up about O&M and the 3A of I.”
Marketing veterans such as Hawkins’ Brahm Vasudeva, and the Tata Group’s J.C. Chopra, Eureka Forbes’s COO Bal Palekar, Levers’ director (personal products) Arun Adhikari, and director (detergents) Aart Weizburg, also marked their presence.
The evening commenced with a rendition of the Barbara Streisand hit single Memory by Sharon Prabhakar, which talked about the bad times that the advertising industry has gone through last year and how it is seeking a silver lining. An impeccable performance if there was any by India’s Evita.
Sam Balsara and Canco boss Ramesh Narayan were the sole two individuals on stage who handed out the awards. Fink – best known for his British Airways campaign which featured humans creating a face – came in as a break. He scolded the fraternity for not being buoyant about the awards and the wins. He mimicked the walk of the Lowe Lintas rep who walked up to receive the awards and told him to not look miserable. (This remark led Balki to comment later that he does not need any Finks or Pandeys or Khanna to teach Lowe how to walk or talk while receiving an award). Fink then went to talk about how he masqueraded as an old man in London to get a job in Collette, Dickens and Pierce, a creative hotshop in those days. He also extolled ad professionals to ask themselves what is their message, quoting Mahatma Gandhi who once said “My message is my Life.”
The big awards went to Levers (The Advertiser of the Year), Quadrant (Showcase of the Year – Press, Contract bagged the silver and HTA the bronze), Lowe Lintas (Showcase of the Year, joint silvers to Contract and HTA), Everest and Saatchi (joint gold for Campaign of the Year for Parle Agro’s Frooti Digen Verma campaign, and Maruti Udyog’s WagonR respectively; Levers’ Pepsodent toothpaste got the silver).
The awards were marked by the absence of any entries from O&M. The Abbys which are slated to be held on 9 March 2002, will be marked by the absence of any entries from Lowe Lintas. Apparently, a schism has been created in the industry last year, since Lowe Lintas’ Balki and O&M’s Piyush Pandey got into a media brawl about the manner in which the Abbys were being judged.
MAM
VML India lands two finalist spots at Cairns Hatchlings 2026
The Mumbai agency is back in Australia with two teams, a UN brief and 24 hours to impress
MUMBAI: VML India is heading to Australia again. The Mumbai-based creative agency has secured two finalist spots at the Cairns Hatchlings 2026 competition, one in the Audio category and one in Design, making it the only Indian agency to have reached the finals in both editions of the contest since its launch in 2025.
Four people will make the trip. Senior copywriter Shilpi Dey and senior art director Raj Thakkar will compete in Audio. Art directors Shabbir and Shruti Negi will go head-to-head with the world’s best in Design. The finals take place at the Cairns Convention Centre from 13th May, culminating in an awards ceremony on 15th May.
The work that got them there is worth examining. For the Audio category, Dey and Thakkar tackled a brief for LIVE LIKE MMAD with a campaign called Inner Voice, Interrupted. Using spatial audio techniques, the campaign recreates the overwhelming self-doubt that descends after a long workday, physically panning negative thoughts left and right before cutting the noise entirely to reveal a confident inner voice. Strategically targeted at commuters via Spotify during evening rush hours, the campaign reframes the hours after work as an opportunity for personal growth and charitable action.
For the Design category, Shabbir and Negi worked on a brief for Canteen’s Bandanna Day, a campaign highlighting how cancer pushes teenagers out of their own defining moments. Using a pixelated design language to create stark contrast between a blurred world of isolation and a focused world of connection, the campaign, titled The Flipside of Cancer, shows teenagers fading into the background of birthdays, skateparks and school proms. As a Canteen bandanna appears, the blur flips and the teenager snaps back into sharp focus.
Kalpesh Patankar, group chief creative officer of VML India, made no attempt to disguise his satisfaction. “We are immensely proud to see our teams consistently excel on the Cairns Hatchlings platform since its inception,” he said. “They have masterfully tackled challenging briefs across diverse categories, demonstrating both layered storytelling and a unique creative approach. This exceptional teamwork is truly inspiring.”
Dey and Thakkar, returning to the finals after last year’s run, were candid about the demands of the audio medium. “It’s one of the most demanding mediums, where we only have a few seconds to capture a listener’s world with sound alone, so absolute clarity is essential,” they said. “The true measure of creative work is its ability to create positive change, and our audio submission was made to help those who need it most while encouraging people to silence the inner voices that hold them back.”
Shabbir and Negi, competing in Design for the first time, described the experience as “a completely different beast.” “We see it as an opportunity to showcase our expertise, raise the bar, and challenge ourselves in new ways, while also learning from creative minds from across the globe,” they said.
In Australia, the four finalists will face a live 24-hour brief from the United Nations before presenting in a live pitch session. Twenty-four hours, one brief, one shot. VML India has been here before. It knows exactly what is at stake.
