MUMBAI: Media planning and buying firm Zenith has bagged two big awards at the ‘The Excellence in Radio Awards’ hosted by the India Radio Forum (IRF) in Mumbai, for ‘Childsurance Radio Film Festival’ ’ in the ‘Most Effective Use of Radio in an Activation Campaign’ category, and secondly for ‘OLX Sunday Is Bech Day’ in the ‘Most Outstanding Use of Radio in an Ad Campaign’ category.
The Childsurance Radio Film Festival was the first of its kind radio programme, consisting of audio movies created by children for which over 500 children auditioned. The process involved a call for entries, selection through screening auditions, recording at the Big FM studio and finally, the airings on Friday evenings and Sunday mornings. The campaign gave the brand an opportunity to interact with parents during auditions. For OLX, Sunday was positioned as ‘Bech Day’ where people were asked to de-clutter and put up listings of used goods. This was done through innovative jingles, spoofs and one-liners on radio – a lot of the spoofs were by popular Bollywood stars such as Irfan Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Ajay Devgan.
Zenith MD Hari Krishnan said, “Both the ideas were break-through and delivered the creative punch. More importantly, they used the radio medium effectively, a medium which, if used well gives widespread reach, engagement and recall. I’d like to congratulate the Zenith teams who put in immense effort behind these exemplary campaigns, and also our clients OLX and IDBI Federal for putting faith in us and allowing us to experiment and innovate.”
IDBI Federal, products and strategy head and CMO Karthik Raman too added, “We took complete departure from regular advertising and used outdoor and radio as the lead mediums for our campaign. Our radio film festival was a unique approach to designing the radio campaign. With Zenith’s strategic partnership, we could very well amplify the message that we had conveyed using the outdoor media. Recognition from a prestigious platform like IRF has only reaffirmed our faith in the chosen strategy.”
Hari Krishnan was also a speaker at the India Radio Forum and delivered a key address on ‘Radio killed the video star?’ which revealed loopholes on video and television mediums, such as the limitation on ad inventory on television, in context of the 10 + 2 ruling. This and other loopholes could give radio the opportunity to reclaim and demonstrate strength, he said in parting.
