<div>Media agency Mindshare won the top honours at the Media Abby awards given out a glittering ceremony on the sands of Goa on Friday, 5 April 2013. <br /><br />The awards that saw media agencies cheering loudly for their respective agencies and applauding for their peers, received about 660 entries from all the major media agencies in the country. Only 46 of the entries made it to the winners' list with only six of them bagging gold awards.<br /><br />While Mindshare picked up more than 20 per cent of all Media Abby awards, network agency Maxus came next with six awards followed by Lodestar-UM and Madison Media-Pinnacle picking up five medals each.<br /><br />The surprise package of the evening was, however, the emergence of non-media specialists like digital agencies, creative agencies and relatively unknown small agencies picking up media awards showing probably the direction that advertising might take in the future. <br /> </div><div><strong>Click Here For </strong><a href="/en/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=0ecee004-b3f5-44ef-bdde-93a0ace76922&groupId=36166"><strong>The List of Media Abbys</strong></a><br /><br /><strong>A Marriage Made In Heaven<br /></strong>Goafest, the annual indian advertising festival, is being held from April 4-6 at the Zuri White Sands in Goa. The festival which has a knowledge conclave on the first day had clients talking to senior agency heads about how both could work better towards an effective client agency engagement. R S Sodhi, managing director, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation that owns the brand Amul gives some tips for a happy-ever-after client-agency relationship.</div><ul><li><strong>The agency-client relationship is a lot like that between a man and wife</strong>. Sodhi says Amul has had a loyal relationship with its agencies for several decades. Even though Amul had two wives (read Draft FCB and Da Cunha)... wait a minute... actually four, at one point, it never ‘divorced’ any of the agencies. Two of the agencies, ASP and Radeus ceased to exist in their erstwhile form (they were either acquired or shut shop).</li><li><strong>Think conceive and execute your advertising in local languages</strong>. Most often that not, campaigns for Kerala are written in English, by copywriters sitting in a remote location like Mumbai and then translated. Such ads lose out on the local flavour.</li><li><strong>Link advertising budgets to company performance</strong>. Only if a company’s topline and profits grow will Amul increase the advertising budget. Ever since inception, Amul’s advertising budget has always been constant at one per cent or less of turnover. Currently, it’s 0.8 per cent of turnover. So if an agency wants to increase its client’s ad budget, it will have to work in tandem with client objectives to achieve growth.</li><li><strong>Believe the agency</strong>. Treat the agency as professionals who know their job. In most cases Amul executives see the ad the same day the consumers see the advertisement. Imagine an agency that requires no client approvals for its creative message. Of course, there have been setbacks. But Sodhi is quick to point out that the overall experience has been positive.</li></ul>
