Effie Awards 2020: Admen now love 'meaningful work'

MUMBAI: The Effie Awards are a reflection of how advertising as an industry has changed over the years. In the past, typically, agencies battled to get a perfect score, now it’s more about getting recognised for ‘meaningful work’. Hosted by The Advertising Club, the Effies are known to recognise effective and breakthrough marketing strategies.
For the top bosses at McCann Worldgroup India and Ogilvy Group, who shared the Agency Of The Year title, their body of work is a reflection of how marketers are changing with times.

In case of McCann Worldgroup India, the agency has been aggressively working with new-age brands like Paytm, Zomato, Myntra, along with other big spenders like Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle, Coca-Cola etc. This is to strike the right balance, says Prasoon Joshi, chairman McCann World Group Asia, CEO & CCO, McCann World Group India. He explains, “Younger brands are always looking for capsules of knowledge. With our experience of working with big brands, we are at a better place to help this new breed of homegrown companies. As an agency, this has helped us to be nimble and not behave like a large agency where things sometimes become bureaucratic.”

This year, McCann won 206 points with three Gold, six Silver, 14 Bronze and 45 finalists. McCann got the Gold wins for Harpic’s ‘overcoming India's toilet divide’, Incredible India’s ‘from destinations to transformations’, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s ‘when family planning had a better plan’.

Ogilvy Group's formula is slightly different. The WPP-owned creative agency is known for long term client relationships, with companies like HUL, Mondelez India, ITC and Bajaj, among others.

According to Piyush Pandey, CCO Worldwide and executive chairman — India, Ogilvy, “Today, clients want standout work more than consistent work from their agency partners. That’s a good sign for the industry. The body of new work is also an indication that interesting people are coming into advertising.”

Ogilvy, which shared ‘Agency Of The Year’ title with McCann Worldgroup India with 206 points, picked up two Gold awards one for BJP’s ‘Modi hai toh mumkin hai’ and the other for Castrol’s ‘truck aasana – caring for the real engine’ campaign. The agency also got eight Silver, nine Bronze and 53 finalists.

Ogilvy Group’s fairly new re-branded creative agency 82.5 Communications is taking a similar creative path. At the Effie’s the agency picked ‘The Grand Effie’ tittle for Bisleri’s ‘Samajhdar Jante hai’ campaign. The brand took a quirky take by making camels the star of the campaign.

Talking about the campaign, Sumanto Chattopadhyay, chairman and CCO, 82.5 Communications, says, “The Bisleri Camels reaffirmed our belief that work which is high on creative cut-through can have an impact disproportionate to its media weight.”