And the Envy 2014 goes to...

Ogilvy and Mather celebrated its second year of Envy awards yesterday with best works, learning and motivation. Keeping true to its theme of no ranking, Envy was awarded to 25 best works of Ogilvy and Mather over the last one year. While the first edition of the awards, held in December 2013, had 35 best works, this year the number reduced to 25.

To give away the 25 best green monster, ‘ENVY – The Sincerest form of Flattery’ especially in the business of advertising, the panel of judges included KS Chakravarthy (Chax) (ex Draft FCB Ulka), Underdog Communication’s Vikram Gaikwad, Strawberry Frog’s rebranded version Famous Innovation’s Raj Kamble, BBDO’s Josy Paul, Publicis’ Bobby Pawar, Linta’s Arun Iyer, Malvika Mehra of Grey Worldwide, DDB Mudra’s Rahul Mathew and Ashish Chakravarty from Contract.

Also this year Ogilvy introduced a new category ‘Envy For Good’, which would recognised a campaign done for social good.

The host for the evening was O&M’s ECD Sumanto Chattopadhyay who invited Malvika Mehra to present the first set of awards. Since the format of the awards does not have any ranking, Mondelez India Foods took home the first Envy for Cadbury Dairy Milk's 'Snowfight' followed by Star India Pvt. Ltd. for its VithU App's, The Seatbelt Crew and then Vodafone India for Vodafone Music's Rest Break and the fourth Envy by Hindustan Unilever's The Jump Pump.

The next set of Envy awards were presented by Mahesh Mathai, a veteran ad filmmaker, to Pedellite Industries Fevicol (Print), Mondelez India for Cadbury Dairy Milk's 'Oh Chit', Vodafone's MPesa for Scooter campaign, Conde Nast for its Vogue empower campaign (Print), Satyamev Jayate's third season teaser and a very viral Mumkin Hai campaign and Center Fresh's 'Madvertising Campaign', Zuban Ko lagam Do.

Director and Chief Creative Officer - South Asia at Publicis Worldwide Bobby Pawar to gave away Envy awards to Bombay Traffic Police and Castrol for 'The Good Road Campaign', the Akanksha Foundation for 'A for Anthem' campaign and Google India for 'pledge to vote' campaign, Pedellite Industries’ Feviwik for Object Tears campaigns (Print) and Mentos Sour Marbles' Dacoits, Eve Teasers and Tigers campaign.

Ad film director Prasoon Pandey, presented Envy awards to HUL’s Brooke Bond Red Label for Taste of togetherness, Fortune Foods for their 'Ghar Ka Khana' campaign and Breakthrough Trust for 'Video Matrimonials.

Last but not the least, the remaining awards were presented by Siddharth Mukherjee, Executive Director, Chocolate Category & media - Mondelez to Hot Wheels’ Mattel Inc’s 'Drive in' campaign, Cadbury Bournvita’s 'Boxer' campaign, Federal Bank’s 'Partnership' campaign and the most viral and buzzing 'Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar' campaign from BJP.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, made his presence felt at the event and shared his experiences working with Piyush Pandey for this campaign. He shared the story of how it wasn’t an easy job of convincing Piyush Pandey for doing a breakthrough campaign for BJP to ‘Abki Baar Modi Sarkaar' that went viral and the slogan that was heard from every mouth. “It was tough as I was wondering whether an English mind-set Ogilvy would be able to reach the hearts of deep India for our campaign but when I saw the campaign it proved all our doubts wrong and buzzed the country quite literally. It was a prestigious opportunity to work with Ogilvy and Piyush Pandey and lastly I would say Piyush is 'Winner's pride and Loser's envy"”, Goyal stated.

For the new category, The Envy for Good, which recognised a campaign for social good, The polio eradication campaign was awarded for the same. Amitabh Bachchan, the man behind the campaign from 2003 till now, Piyush Pandey and Ajay Gahlaut were given an award for this and The 'Most Envied' award was given to Breakthrough, a NGO against child marriage.

A part from awards night, Envies - Ogilvy’s Finest saw brilliant performances by Indian Ocean, Schitzen Giggles (a comedy group) and a great informative session with Subbiah Arunan, ISRO who was also the guest of honour for the event.

Adgully caught up with few brains who were a part of this prestigious Envies to take their views on the entries and quality of work this year.

Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director for Ogilvy & Mather India and South Asia said, “The Envies are rewards where we raise the bar beyond any other standard in the industry. 25 best pieces of work are awarded regardless of category and media. Stalwarts from the best creative team measure up against each other with the sole purpose to raise our standards so that we deliver even better to our clients in the year ahead. And these are truly unique because a set of the best minds from the industry judge the entire body of work together. It is not a jamboree of 150 judges who may or may not be capable of identifying the best ideas.”

Creative director at Ogilvy & Mather Rajiv Rao said, “This year was awesome and better than last year. The standards have gone high which clearly marks the positive heading of the advertising industry. It is a moment of pride when your work gets applauded and awarded.”

Malvika Mehra, NCD and SVP, Grey Worldwide, India said, “Yes, this year was great too. This is a great way of motivating the heads and hard work behind making a campaign. This time I saw few really heat touching campaigns like The Breakthrough campaign on child marriage. It must have taken much of hard work and brainstorming and it came out to be a really great work of thought.”

Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO, Famous Innovations said, “The work has been really great. It is very difficult to judge 25 pieces of great work as when you start judging everything seems to be nice. But some of the campaigns make itself really different and stand alone and take away Envies.” By: Aanchal Kohli | Twitter: @aanchalkohli