Winners announced for the "2nd edition the IAA Leadership Awards"

The weekend gone-by witnessed the coming together of the who’s who from the Media, Marketing and Advertising at the much anticipated Indian Advertising Association 2nd edition of the IAA Leadership Awards in Mumbai. The event was presented by Viacom18’s GEC Colors.

The honorable Governor of Uttar Pradesh, B.L. Joshi presented awards to the heroes of the IAA Leadership Awards across Marketing, Advertising and Media disciplines as they competed against each other to win the coveted awards.

This edition of the IAA Leadership Awards brought together professionals across industries under one roof while rewarding those whose hard work had brought brands to the limelight while making them the talking point for the nation at large.

The Chief Guest for the event was Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Manish Tewari who could not be present at the event. However, in a special audio-visual message he said, “The IAA Leadership Awards have always received profound appreciation in the industry. They recognize creativity on a large extent which eventually adds to being a source of inspiration. I would like to congratulate all the winners as well as the nominees – each of them has been instrumental in creating a huge difference in the marketing industry. May their future see them rise to even greater heights!”

Speaking on the occasion Srinivasan Swamy, President IAA India and VP-development, IAA Asia Pacific, and Chairman, RK Swamy BBDO said, “While Management is about doing things right, leadership is about doing the right things; Today I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the winners who have outdone themselves this year as well as every nominee for showing what leadership means. I am glad to see another successful year at the event this year and look forward to many more years to come.”

Raj Nayak, CEO, COLORS speaking about this initiative said, “To recognize, encourage and celebrate excellence in leadership – that is what we have done at the IAA, a vibrant association which I have had the opportunity to lead. I would like to thank IAA for giving us the honour to be associated with this event, and congratulate the winners for their outstanding contribution towards the growth of the industry. We look forward to growing this association with the IAA year-on-year and applaud the hard work of individuals on this national platform.”

The awards night saw winners emerge from across 21 unique categories as mentioned below:

Adgully caught up with a few winners at the awards ceremony, where they spoke about the drivers that got them these wins, competition faced, key takeaway from the awards night and more. Edited excerpts below:

Sanjay Tripathy, Sr. EVP- Head Marketing, HDFC Standard Life Insurance, Marketer of the Year: Insurance – IAA Awards is a great event in terms of recognizing marketer’s passion. There are several awards but this award gives an edge by crating recognition for real people who are behind successful advertisements or services, this award recognizes marketer’s talent. Another good part of this award is that there are different categories been nominated and it’s not only restricted to marketers but also media personalities and brand ambassadors too in one single platform. This platform has mass appeal with COLORS association.

Kumar Pillay,Joint Executive President, Ultratech Cement, Marketer of the Year: Home Improvement - We had strong competitors in this category like Asian Paints, Nerolac and Pidilite, it was great getting the award.  2013 was a bad year for the industry as infrastructure didn’t performed well in compare to other industries.

Ravi Vora,VP - Marketing, Flipkart.com, Marketer of the Year: Ecommerce- Ecommerce industry is growing through an interesting phase and becoming significant market. We had strong competition in the category, Flipkart has managed to stay ahead. 2014 is going to be year of rapid growth.

Arnab Goswami, Anchor, Times Now , News Anchor of the Year – IAA is an industry award and has gone through vigorous screening process. There are good anchor and journalists out there, the last year was good in terms of my program News Hour, which became popular and lead to this award.

Punit Goenka,  MD and CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Zee Network, Media Person of The Year – IAA awards been interesting and I was really honored to be chosen as media person of the year. I was surprised by the award, was not expecting it as entire industry has done well.

R. Balkrishnan, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Lowe Lintas & Partners, Creative Agency Head of the Year – I don’t go to many award functions, it was great winning the award and it’s not me who won the award but my whole team. Our clients like Idea and Micromax too won award made us feel good.

Shashi Sinha,CEO,IPG Mediabrands, Media Agency Head of the Year – I think one think about IAA awards is that category awards they give out makes it different, IAA gives awards to individuals and organizations too. It’s combination of marketing, advertising and media together.

Rajesh V.L., EVP- Marketing, Exports, Inst Sales and Packaging, ITC Limited Foods Division, Marketer of the Year: FMCG: Foods & Beverages- It was great and surprising winning the award. Being in FMCG business, we’ve noticed that GDP growth has gone down last year, this year biggest thing to focus this year is growth in economy.

The gala event got its fair share of glitterati as television and film actors and star joined the celebrations at the Colors party that followed the award ceremony.