AD Agencies
Collective Creative Labs wins two Silver Effies, ranks top 15
Independent agency shines with strategy-led campaigns that move brands and culture
MUMBAI: Collective Creative Labs (CCL) has bagged two Silver Effies at the 25th Effie India Awards and claimed the 15th spot in the Agency of the Year rankings, marking a standout moment for the independent agency.
For a young agency built without legacy backing, these accolades go beyond trophies. They celebrate a fresh approach: starting with brand truth, sticking to strategy, and creating work that drives business, not just chatter.
Three years ago, Collective Artists Network spotted a gap in the market. Brands had access to creators and cultural moments but lacked cohesive strategy. CCL was born to fill that gap, blending cultural insight with disciplined brand planning to deliver campaigns that truly perform.
Collective Artists Network founder and group CEO Vijay Subramaniam said, “We were already sitting at a rare intersection of culture, creators, entertainment and influence. But brands don’t need access alone; they need alignment. CCL brings strategy to the heart of culture so that it drives real brand growth.”
CCL’s campaigns, including work for Zebronics, Rakesh Masala and Liberty, have travelled far beyond paid media, not chasing virality, but earning it through clarity of insight and purpose. Big names are used to amplify thinking, not replace it.
Collective Creative Labs CEO and partner at Collective Artists Network Sanjana Jain added, “Great work starts with clarity, what the brand stands for, the consumer’s reality, and the business goal. In a world that loves spectacle, we focus on outcomes. These awards validate that approach.”
Both Silver-winning campaigns were built on immersive consumer understanding and sharp strategic thinking, reinforcing CCL as a performance-driven creative partner. Operating where brands, culture, entertainment and emerging media intersect, CCL represents a new kind of agency model, uniting talent, content, influence and strategy under one roof.
For CCL, these wins and the Agency of the Year ranking are just markers of momentum, not the finish line.
AD Agencies
Kevin Vaz opens FICCI-EY report with a declaration: India’s M&E industry set to breach Rs 3 trillion mark by 2027
In a keynote address at the FICCI-EY report launch, Kevin Vaz says sport, AI and the connected TV boom are driving a multi-screen revolution with no signs of slowing
MUMBAI: India’s media and entertainment industry is growing faster than the economy, reshaping global benchmarks and is on course to blow past Rs 3 trillion by 2027. That was the headline message from Kevin Vaz, chairman of the FICCI Media and Entertainment Committee and chief executive of entertainment at JioStar, who delivered the opening keynote at the launch of the FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2026 in Mumbai on Monday. He did not waste much time on caveats.
The industry hit Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025, outpacing GDP per capita growth and surpassing even last year’s bullish forecasts. Vaz described the year in three words: scale, convergence, transformation. The numbers, he suggested, were only half the story. The other half was how that growth was happening.
Digital has become the industry’s largest segment, driven by advertising, subscriptions and commerce. But Vaz was quick to puncture the familiar narrative of digital killing everything else. India, he argued, is not an either-or market. It is an AND market. Connected TV is surging. Linear television, mobile, films and print are all still expanding. AVGC, the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics sector, is emerging as a serious growth engine, opening new storytelling formats and new global revenue streams. Nothing, he said, is replacing anything. Everything is reinforcing everything else.
Nowhere is that more vivid than in sport. In an on-demand world where audiences can watch anything, anytime, Indians still show up live. “Sports don’t fragment audiences,” Vaz said. “They unite them, just on different screens.” The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 made the point emphatically. During the final, JioHotstar delivered 72.5 million concurrent streams, a global record. Group chats exploded. Families renegotiated control of the television. Advertisers, Vaz noted with undisguised relish, stopped asking where audiences were and started asking how fast they could get in.
Cinema had its own landmark year. More than 1,900 films were released, with several crossing the Rs 1 billion mark. Dhurandhar was singled out as proof that Indian audiences will still turn up in large numbers for content that grips them. Live experiences, too, are getting bigger and more immersive, though Vaz suggested the surface has barely been scratched.
Then there is artificial intelligence, which he described as quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, reshaping everything. AI is enabling personalisation, efficiency and scale, but Vaz argued its deeper significance lies in what it is doing to creativity itself. He pointed to Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, billed as the world’s first AI-produced show, as evidence that the technology can amplify creative ambition rather than hollow it out. He also used the platform to call on Indian policymakers to engage seriously with the creative industry on AI and copyright, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated as the technology spreads.
The picture that emerges from the report, and from Vaz’s keynote, is of an industry that has stopped thinking of itself as a fast-growing emerging market and started thinking of itself as a global template. Scale, diversity and innovation, he said, are no longer in tension in India. They are coexisting, and the rest of the world is taking notes.
The Rs 3 trillion milestone is two years away. As the man who chairs the committee that shapes the industry’s policy agenda and runs the country’s most powerful entertainment platform, Vaz set the tone for the day with characteristic directness: India’s media business is not just chasing growth. It is deciding what the country talks about at dinner. That is a different kind of power altogether.
