e4m BW Applause Awards convenes grand jury with over 15 experts

The jury meet of exchange4media-BW Applause Conclave & Awards was held in Mumbai on 27th September. The exchange4media BW Applause Conclave & Awards aims to recognize and honour the quality work experiential agencies are producing in the space of events and experiential marketing across categories. It is also a platform for setting standards and benchmarking exemplary event marketing by recognizing creativity and originality delivered by agency partners.

The jury for the 2017 edition of the exchange4media BW Applause Awards this year was chaired by Karan Bajaj, SVP & GM, South Asia, Discovery Communications India. The other jury members included names like: Abhishek Joshi, Marketing Analytics & Content Syndication, Digital Business, Sony Pictures Network, Anirudh Pandita, Founder, Pocket Aces, Blaise J Fernandes, President & CEO, The Indian Music Industry, Kartik Kalla, EP & National Head, Programming Marketing & AudaCITY, Radio City, Manish Maheshwari, CEO, Network 18 Digital, Manav Dhanda,  CEO, SAB Group, Piyush Sharma, Former CEO, New Initiatives, India & APAC, Zee Entertainment, Runa Barua, CEO, Creativeland Asia Group, Lydia Buthello, EVP Executive Vice President and Head Brand Experience and Events, Star India; Shantanu Gangane, Head Marketing, Viu India, Vikramjit Roy, Head Film Facilitation, NFDC, Manu Seth, Former Sr. Director, HTC South Asia and Ishita Mookherjee, Director Corporate Communications GroupM.

Over the years experiential marketing has grown phenomenally. According to a recently published report by Ernst & Young (EY), the events and entertainment industry continues to grow at a faster rate than expected.

The report, which is based on a survey of 64 event management companies and 31 marketers, suggests that the events and activations industry is expected to grow from Rs 5,631 cr in 2016-17 to Rs 10,000+ cr in 2020-21. The organised events industry is growing faster than the 11 per cent — 13 per cent CAGR of the Indian M&E industry. The key growth drivers for the same are digital activation, sports leagues, rural expansion and government initiatives followed by IPs, personal events, product launches, expansion of mini-metros and BTL spends.

The report further points that digital events are poised to grow at 20 per cent over the next few years, given that 90 per cent of marketers believed it to be important to them. It also states that industries like auto, mobile handsets, media and entertainment, FMCG and durables will drive the growth through new product launches.

Sharing his thoughts about the jury meet, Karan Bajaj, SVP & GM, South Asia, Discovery Communications India said, “This is a great platform for all the stakeholders in the experiential marketing domain. We had a great line up of entries this year and some of the work is truly word class.”

“I must congratulate BW and e4m for building such a great platform for the events industry. This will go a long way in setting up a new gold standard in this domain”, added Manav Dhnada, Group CEO, SAB Group.

A part of Businessworld group, BW Applause is a bi-monthly magazine that provides content for the experiential marketing and event category within India. It serves the information needs of brand- side event marketers, experiential agencies, event professionals, and event service providers in the country.