MUMBAI: Maxus, a part of GroupM, has bagged Grand Prix at the World Media Awards 2017 for their campaign “From Zica to Tiago” for Tata Motors. The campaign also won the Gold in Automotive category for the campaign.

The campaign was created when Tata’s new car Zica was just 3 weeks away from the launch and the World Health Organization declared Zika, the virus as a global emergency. Consumers started associating Zica, the car with Zika, the virus and it was becoming a great threat to the brand image.

Maxus conceptualized, created and implemented a three-stage approach to overcome the challenge and thus launched the ‘Fantastico Name Hunt’. In just three days, the campaign reached 48 million people across 22 target markets. 640,000 engaged and 37,000 names were submitted – garnering $410,000 of earned media coverage along the way. Google searches for ‘Zica’ totally dropped and ‘Tiago’ surged, showing that consumers were on board with the change.

An elated Maxus South Asia managing director Kartik Sharma said, “This is one of the best examples where a crisis situation is turned into a great opportunity for a brand."

Within four months of the launch, Tiago received more than 1,20,000 test drive requests which is three times more than any Tata car launch in the last decade. The World Media Awards are designed to benchmark the best in international advertising and communication strategies.