BackLodestar shines bright
Lodestar shines bright
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For those who couldn’t make it to Cannes for the 54th International Advertising Festival, the EMVIEs (Effectiveness in Media Value) 2007 was a perfect opportunity to make some noise at the end of the advertising industry’s award season. The convention centre at the Taj Lands End Hotel in Bandra, the venue for the presentation of the media awards hosted by the Ad Club Bombay, saw a lively crowd eqipped with whistles, tambourines and, of course, lots of lung power.
The team from Lodestar Universal, an arm of the Interpublic Group of Companies, had a lot to cheer about. It was the surprise winner of the Media Agency of the Year award. Its other spoils included three gold awards and six silvers. The agency also picked up two People’s Choice awards for the best case study, and a TAM Media Research award for Toogle, a research tool that has redefined audience segments to identify clusters of elite audiences.
See: The top 10 media agencies
Lodestar’s plat du jour was the Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd campaign. It won them six of their 12 awards—two People’s Choice awards, Best Media Innovation-Digital (silver) and on Television (gold), Best Media Strategy under the Consumer Durables category (silver) and the Best Integrated Campaign (silver).
“The Kansai Nerolac Paints campaign was unusual. It involved launching of a new identity. That really paid off for us," says Nandini Dias, chief operating officer, Lodestar Universal.
The campaign included an interactive website and a reality show, “Nerolac, Impressions Jamaa De". It had also won a silver for best media innovation on television at Goafest, the awards hosted by the Advertising Agencies Association of India.
The Nerolac sweep helped Lodestar edge past 2006’s Media Agency of the Year, Mindshare, WPP’s media buying agency. “We decided to let them win for a change," laughs Gowthaman Ragothaman, MD, Mindshare, who is also a member of the jury for the awards. The standard of entries this year, he said, was much better than previous years. The organizers had received 384 entries, the highest the EMVIEs have registered till date.
Mindshare picked up two golds and five silvers for its work. Its “10/10" campaign for Surf Excel got a gold for Best Media Innovation-Print, and a silver for Best Media Innovation-TV.
The agency also won a gold for “Listerine—now playing in your messenger" under the Best Media Innovation-Digital category.
Though third in the points tally, Ogilvy & Mather Pvt. Ltd (O&M) won the maximum number of golds—five—and picked up the Grand EMVIE for its campaign for Hutch Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival in Bangalore. The festival was advertised through skits staged in crowded places, which ended with the message: “For more drama, come to Ranga Shankara". The campaign also won a gold for Best Media Innovation-Never Been Used Before Media.
O&M’s work for Kathalaya Trust’s story-telling festival, a giant model of Rapunzel’s golden plait hanging from a multi-storey building in Bangalore—won a gold for Best Media Innovation-Ambient Media/Out Of Home and another gold for Best Media Innovation-Events.
Other O&M campaigns which won golds were those for the Madhya Pradesh sports and youth welfare department (Best Integrated Campaign) and the HSBC corporate campaign—different people, different views (Best Media Innovation-Cinema).
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