Miami Ad School Mumbai bags Silver at Clio Awards 2015

 A group of three students from Miami Ad School Mumbai developed a campaign “Watch for Nepal” aimed at getting donations for victims of the Nepal earthquake through YouTube channel in a most innovative way. The idea is that when the button “Skip Ad” appears, along with it appears a button “Watch to donate”, which enables a user to contribute $0.01 to help Nepal every time an ad is watched.  Sonica Baptist, Rushad Patel and Himanish Ashar, three young advertising minds from Miami Ad School, Mumbai have put India on the winning list by competing with entries from around the world to win Silver under the Student Innovative category for product/service at Clio Awards, touted as one of the highest honors in the field of advertising. They are the only students from Mumbai to be competing with cities like Oslo, Miami and Seoul to name a few.

Sunitha Suresh, Dean, Miami Ad School Mumbai while applauding her students said “It is a matter of great pleasure for Miami Ad School Mumbai and we are extremely proud of our students. I am sure this will inspire many others in the field of advertising. We at Miami Ad School always strive to guide, support and encourage our students so that they are well prepared to scale the heights of the advertising world.”

About the campaign idea, Himanish says “After Nepal was hit with a massive earthquake, we noticed something really interesting - big brands were bringing the world together. Think of the world’s most visited websites today, Facebook and Google and they were the first ones coming to the rescue of Nepal and other areas affected by calamities using the safety check notification and person finder. Then it struck us that the world’s second largest video search engine, YouTube, could easily make a strong impact with just one simple change in human behavior.”

On winning, Sonica says, “Awards are a great motivation and they help showcase your work to an international audience. At this point we are looking for this idea to live beyond award recognition. We are trying hard to get it executed. This can actually make a huge difference and it would be interesting to see brands and people come together to help solve world problems.”

Rushad joins the advertising world from an entirely different career. He says “Coming from a different background did scare me at the start. But Miami Ad school is the perfect place or should I say perfect playground that helps you develop your game. The greatest assets of Miami Ad School are its teachers. The sheer encouragement and guidance given by them pushes our ideas to a level where even the world may take notice. We acknowledge the efforts of our mentors, Raj Deepak Das and Manasvi Abrol who have guided us in the right direction and this would have not been possible without their support.”