DIGIXX Awards 2017: Winners bask in the glory of industry recognition

The first edition of DIGIXX Awards had a resounding finale on the evening of March 10, 2017 at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram. Amid constant cheering of their industry peers, the winners and their work were celebrated and applauded with Gold, Silver and Bronze trophies. DIGIXX is brought by Adgully in association with ad:tech and was held during the ad:tech conference in Gurugram on March 9 and 10. 

In all, 81 Awards were given away across categories, which included 34 Gold, 20 Silver and 19 Bronze metals as well as 8 Special Awards. 

In Special Awards, Omnicom Media Group was adjudged Display Agency of the Year, while Performics.Resultrix was Performance Agency of the Year. Star Plus bagged Brand of the Year award. Lalatendu Panda, Vice President & Head of Marketing, Reliance Retail Value Format, was declared Marketer of the Year. Utopeia Communicationz walked away with the Most Promising Digital Agency of the Year award. 

Reacting to the win, Reliance Retail’s Lalatendu Panda said, “This is an excellent recognition and I am really grateful. We have, for a long time, been traditional marketers and have been in the industry for the last 17 years, so it is great to get the award, and that too at such a large forum, for Marketer of the Year. Digital marketing is the newest marketing; this marketing is ROI-driven and also the youth is a very big part of it. We actually began dabbling in digital marketing 3-4 years back, before that we were just a food and grocery retailer and had been using mostly print advertisements to promote our fruits and vegetables. Thus, transactional marketing had been one of our key areas in the earlier stages. But what we realised is that there is no better way to engage the consumers than digital marketing. For us, digital marketing is a very good medium for creating the brand, and that is why I think it is a really great opportunity. I am really thankful to Adgully and the Digixx Jury for the Marketer of the Year Award.” 

Sharing some insight on the award-winning campaign, Panda elaborated that ‘India Khayega Hero Veg’ was one unique property that Reliance Retail created for the vegetables available in its stores. Every day one vegetable became the hero of the store and was sold at 20-25 per cent less than the market rate. “We buy in extremely large quantities and so we are able to offer the products at a very less price to our customers. This campaign was run across our stores for one year. When we decided to go digital, we realised that Hero Veg is a very big property. Our sales have multiplied 100-200 per cent across the country. In digital, we also tied up with chef Harpal Singh Sokhi and created the property called ‘India Khayega Hero Veg’. He created 6-7 unique recipes everyday out of the hero vegetable and so there was a beautiful connect. This is how a store property was taken to digital. We created awareness about it, engaged with housewives and taught them different recipes with a single vegetable and so it became a huge hit,” he further said. 

Panda found the first edition of DIGIXX Awards to be a very well organised event which would motivate a lot of people. “I really congratulate Bijoya Ghosh and entire team of Adgully on the encouraging and flying start to the Awards. We hope for more participation and wins next year. In the coming years this will be one of the most awaited awards. A lot of senior industry people and peers were present, so it is really a great recognition,” he remarked. 

Commenting on her agency’s superlative performance, Tanushree Radhakrishnan, National Head - Strategy & Programmatic, Performics I The ROI Agency, said, “Awards are always cherished as you feel recognised and appreciated for your hard work, and when one wins 14 of them, including the ‘Performance Agency of the Year’, exhilaration is the least that one can feel!” 

Speaking further on the Awards, she said that it was a very well organised award ceremony and “looking at the humungous participation, I feel ad:tech definitely worked as a great launch platform for DIGIXX”. Radhakrishnan added, “I especially loved the classy awards trophy; if I may say, it looked like the Oscar trophy with wings! And I’m sure in the years to come, DIGIXX will fly high and be in the top league of awards in the country.” 

Excited about Utopeia Communicationz being adjudged the Most Promising Digital Agency of the Year, Mitali Srivastava, Co-Founder/ Managing Partner, Utopeia, said, “We would like to thank Reliance Fresh for giving us the opportunity. It was honest work and a lot of hard work put together and I think the results are showing.” 

Speaking on the DIGIXX Awards, Srivastava said that as one of the pioneers in digital awards, over time it is going to establish a bigger credibility because everything is all about digital in it and it does not confuse or merge into mainland advertising. “I think the focus was on very specific things like CRM/Loyalty and videos. For a specialised industry, it does complete justice,” she added. 

Speaking further, she said, “I think it was very well organised. It was a really interesting mix of Jury, brands and campaigns and was spread really well.” 

Speaking on Star Plus’ wins, Suma Nair, Vice President - Marketing, Star Plus, Star India, commented, “I am fortunate to work with the most iconic brand of the country, and it feels good to be recognised for the work that we do. It is the result of our team effort.” 

Sharing her views on the first edition of DIGIXX Awards, Nair said, “I think it is a great initiative. It was interesting to see the kind of work happening across categories. Overall, it was an interesting evening. It will encourage people to do more and better work and get recognised for the work.” 

“I am really happy we have won two awards and also getting my first company awards here at DIGIXX. I am really thankful to the entire DIGIXX team as well,” said Shibu Shivanandan, Founder & Managing Director, PivotRoots, on his agency’s wins. 

He further remarked that recognition inspires new talent, as they are being rewarded for better work and it would inspire people to do better. “Digital is growing and so will DIGIXX as digital is the future,” he affirmed. 

Calling the first edition of DIGIXX Awards “fantastic”, Shivanandan noted that all the deserving work got their awards. Following the “gyaan sessions” at the ad:tech conference, he felt that DIGIXX completed the conference. “I am also really proud of PivotRoots being associated with Adgully to launch DIGIXX for the first time in India,” he added.

Narayan Ivaturi, Vice President - Singapore and Head of Mobile Business for APAC, ME and Africa at C1X Inc., commented, “All of us at C1X – me, my CRO Ram, both co-founders Dan and Mukundu Kumaran – are absolutely delighted to be a part of DIGIXX 2017 and we look forward for the event in the years to come. I have been to a lot of award shows and I think this has been perfectly done, really well-managed. The Awards were short and sweet and this is what I liked more about it. It started on time and ended on time, kudos to that as lot of awards shows go on and on.” 

Amit Duggal , Vice President at Omnicom Media Group said, "It is always exciting to win for the hard work that we put into for our campaigns. I feel very happy and excited, also very thankful to judges and Digixx to recognize our work”.

DIGIXX Awards 2017 was powered by Adobe, while Zee TV was Entertainment Partner. Sony Liv came aboard as the Digital Media Partner, while PivotRoots was the Digital Creative Partner and BTVi was the Business Television Partner. Kantar TNS was the Knowledge Partner, while C1X was Partner on board.