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"Yahoooooo!"
goes O&M chairman and national creative director Piyush
Pandey on reciving the Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Award. Also seen
in the pic Yahoo! India country head Neville Taraporewalla,
Yahoo! India sales director Pearl Uppal and O&M senior
creative director Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar
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Effies Committee chairperson Kalpana Rao said, "This year
we received 79 entries from 12 agencies. It was certainly a tough
call for the judges as the quality of work done by the agencies
has really gone up. This year Yahoo! India also introduced the Yahoo!
Big Idea Chair Award."
It was the first time that Yahoo! introduced the honour outside
the US and guess who clinched it - well you are right it was none
other than O&M for the SBI Life Insurance ad featuring the old
couple. The ad also won the Effies People's Choice Award.
The other agencies too had their share of limelight at the Effies.
In the consumer products category, Lowe and McCann Erickson shared
the Gold for the Surf Excel (Save two buckets water) campaign
and Saffola Gold (Kal Se) campaign respectively. McCann also
won the bronze in the category for Perfetti Van Melle (Happydent
White).
In the consumer durables category, the silver and bronze were bagged
by Contract Advertising for Asian Paints Royale (Birthday - Saif)
and Asian Paints Tractor Emulsion (Saheb) respectively.
While no Gold was awarded in the services category; Contract shared
the silver for its work on Domino's Pizza (30 minutes or free)
with O&M.
In the corporate advertising category, Leo Burnett was awarded
the bronze for Indian National Congress (Congress Ka Haath Aam
Aadmi Ke Saath). No gold or silver was awarded in this category.
Three new Effie categories were introduced this year -- the Integrated
Marketing Communications, the Internet and the Mobile category,
which were incidentally sponsored by the Internet and Mobile Association
of India.
The highlight of the evening was no doubt the Yahoo! Big Chair
Idea Award. This Award is in the form of an actual purple coloured
chair, which the winning agency gets to take to their office! Yahoo!
India country head Neville Taraporewalla informed Indiantelevision.com
that this special chair was imported from the US as it was a
patented one and no other company had the rights to make one like
it. According to the buzz doing the round at the Effies, this chair
is estimated to cost approximately Rs 150,000 (add more or less
Rs 50,000 for the import charges)!!
Taraporewalla added, "We thought that the time was right for
us to bring the Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Award to India. Yahoo! has
always been associated with innovation and big ideas and this award
is in recognition of that fact."
When queried as to whether apart from India, the award was being
taken to other countries as well; Taraporewalla says that Yahoo!
was looking at taking the award to Australia and Taiwan very soon.
Speaking about winning the first ever Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Award
in a country outside of the United States, an elated O&M chairman
and national creative director Piyush Pandey said, "It is a
great indescribable feeling. It's a feeling that I associate with
when I was the first Asian to be selected to the jury of the international
Cannes festival in 51 years of the festival's history. We, at O&M,
must be doing something right for all the recognition we have received."
"I was sure that SBI Life Insurance was going to win something
at tonight's awards but I did not think that it was going to be
something as big as the Yahoo! award. If I ponder over my advertising
career, this was one ad that I felt good about and hence it's awesome
that it gained recognition," Pandey added.
Pandey was surprised that the Sumo Victa did not win an Effie but
"one has to respect the decision of the jury."
The evening marked the first public performance - albeit for the
advertising and marketing trade - of the Fame Gurukul jodi
Qazi and Rooprekha, who sang a duet, followed by a solo each and
then ended it with the Fame Gurukul song.
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