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Ogilvy & Mather, WPP-owned advertising agency, is a strong contender for the top spot at the inaugural edition of Kyoorius D&AD Awards slated for next month.
Led by Piyush Pandey, the agency has bagged 44 nominations in segments, including press, film, outdoor, radio, direct marketing, film craft, advertising craft and digital media.
In the process, the agency, which opted out of the event Creatives Abbies to enter work in Kyoorius D&AD, has surpassed the tally of rivals such as Grey, Creativeland Asia, BBDO, BBH, Publicis, Scarecrow, DDB and Happy Creative Services, the Bangalore-based agency of e-commerce major Flipkart, which has between two and eight nominations.
The nominations were selected after two rounds of contest involving voting and discussion. Typically, the nominations stage is the penultimate round before winners for the D&AD Blue Elephant are declared. The D&AD Black Elephant, which is like a Grand Prix, is selected from winners of the Blue Elephant. Entries that make the cut at the nominations stage are featured in the D&AD Book, which is a sought-after tome in the advertising world.
Pandey, who is executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, O&M, says, "Any award is as good as its jury and what I liked about the Kyoorius D&AD Awards was the complete transparency and rigour of the judging process. We intend to continue participating in Kyoorius. As far as the Abbies go, we liked it for what it was, not for what it is. If the pain points are addressed, there is no preventing us from participating in the Abbies going forward."
Soho Square, the WPP agency for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha elections, and Mumbai-based Ideas@work have one nomination each. Hungama Digital Services, where advertising agency JWT has majority stake and Webchutney, the digital agency acquired by Dentsu last year, has three nominations each.
“In all, there were 988 entries in Kyoorius D&AD this year, of which about 348 were in the digital category alone,” Rajesh Kejriwal, founder, Kyoorius had said earlier. Kyoorius had put together a separate panel of jurors for the digital awards comprising digital specialists in its bid to ensure that judging was smooth in the segment.
Other categories, including press, film, outdoor, radio, direct marketing, film and advertising craft, together constituted 640 entries.
A panel of Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director, O&M; Senthil Kumar, national creative director, JWT; Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman, Creativeland Asia and Sonal Dabral, chairman and chief creative officer, DDB Mudra; Niel Dawson, a partner of London-based creative hotshop Dawson Pickering; Graham Kelly, regional executive creative director, Isobar; Woon Siew Hoh, regional executive creative director, Hakuhudo and Carlos Anuncibay, executive creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sri Lanka, went through advertisements in these categories.
Nearly 220 organisations had entered their work in Kyoorius D&AD Awards this year, Kejriwal had said, with advertisements and digital entries whittled down to 190 and 100, respectively, in the first round. The nominations were culled from the first shortlist.
The advertisements that have made it to the nominations stage include Grey's Positive & Negative print campaign for Procter & Gamble's Duracell, which was a big winner at Cannes last year, bagging the first-ever gold for the agency at the festival.
