Adgully Exclusive | Yahoo! India's big idea and bigger awards!

There are 5 Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Awards including Yahoo! Big Idea Chair, Best Digital Brand Solution, Best Rich Media Ad, Best Engagement Solution, Best Mobile Solution and there are no categories.

The awards span areas that define creative excellence in advertising across the digital medium. They are not restricted to just rich ads but also digital solutions and innovations. In other words, the "Big Idea' that eventually clicked.

The jury members for this year's awards include Rajaram Narayanan, VP Lakme and Haircare ' Unilever; Kunal Jeswani, Country Head ' Ogilvy One; Alok Bharadwaj Senior VP ' Canon India; Anil Nair, Managing Partner ' Digital Law and Kenneth; Karl Gomes ' Digital Strategist & Marketing Consultant; Arun Tadanki, MD ' Yahoo! India and Nitin Mathur , Senior Director Marketing, Yahoo! India.

Adgully caught up with some creative minds of the digital medium to gauge the buzz around the awards.

Talking about the initiative to Adgully, Arun Tadanki, Managing Director, Yahoo! India, said, "One of the key drivers today in the digital advertising category is bringing about a whole new dimension of creativity online. One part of the argument really is the number of users online and comparing that with how many people read English newspaper, so when advertisers look at a medium they don't only look at numbers and reach. Moreover they also look at coming up with a unique way of putting their message online."

"Creativity online is a totally different challenge compared to creativity across other media platforms. So for all the creative people who have been coming up with innovative ideas online we want to encourage them. So Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Awards will encourage them to carry on the positive work and get them recognition in a large forum," Tadanki added.

The spirits across the digital space is high as the initiative is by a big name in the digital world like Yahoo!, adding further Sandeep Singh, Business Head, Quasar Media, says, "Quasar Media has earlier been nominated as finalist for the Awards, so our teams gets excited as it puts their work right amongst the best in the industry. We look forward to participate in the awards. Besides, one of the largest publisher in the digital space-Yahoo! is supporting the innovation and creativity across the medium, which adds all the more value to it. Yahoo! has always encouraged display advertising and has been a pioneer in innovating in the space themselves."

Echoing similar sentiments, Vinod Thadani, Regional Mobile Director, Group M, said, "The Yahoo! Big Idea Chair Awards is a great initiative, our entire organisation has responded very well to it in terms of entries and jury too. We have a lot of big names in digital media associating themselves with well-established awards, but this unique initiative by Yahoo! will bring recognition to the digital industry and will raise the stature of the digital media innovations in India."

Big Idea Chair is a global initiative by Yahoo! which celebrates digital innovation across the world. The awards recognize some of the best work by the online community and also call out those creative inputs and integrated strategies that enabled marketing excellence in digital advertising. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]