The 17th edition of Pepper Creative Awards will be held on December 8. Entries for the awards were invited from advertising agencies, media agencies, digital agencies, PR agencies, event agencies, production houses and media houses in the southern states. The award ceremony will be held at the Crowne Plaza, Kochi.
Mohammed Khan, who founded three advertising agencies – Rediffusion in 1973, Contract in 1978 and Enterprise in 1983 – will be the chief guest at the event.
“The awards will be presented in more than 35 categories, including Agency of the Year, region specific Agency of the Year and Advertiser of the Year award. In addition to this, awards will be presented to Kerala-based agencies in specific categories like Jewellery, Real Estate, Textile, Hospitality, Ayurveda, Media, Banking/NBFC, Retail (Home appliances), Healthcare, Education and Cinema sector,” said Natesh Nair, Chairman, Pepper Awards.
He added the Pepper awards has several new categories and subcategories at par with other national awards in the country. The 17th edition of Pepper awards will also have a special category, called Young Pepper. “This is to encourage and inspire young creative talent below the 30 years age group to showcase their ideas. The subject shortlisted for this contest was ‘Climate Change’,” said Nair.
“Our aim is to discover and celebrate the creativity of young minds, inspiring them to reach new heights. Entry to this category is free, and the distinguished jury of Pepper will exclusively select the awardee, encouraging and recognising the next generation of creative thinkers,” added Dr T Vinaykumar, Trustee, Pepper Awards.
“The Pepper 2023 had a bigger jury, comprising 12 nationally and internationally acclaimed creative people who have judged many bigger awards such as Cannes, One Show, AdAsia, Kyoorius, Goafest, etc,” said U.S. Kutty, Trustee, Pepper Awards.
This year’s jury comprises Deepa Geethakrishnan, Founder, MYO Brands Solutions; Priya Shivakumar, Senior National Creative Director, Wunderman Thompson India; Harshada Menon, Group Creative Director, DDB Mudra Group; Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO, Famous Innovations; Prathap Suthan, Co-founder and CCO, Bang In The Middle: Abhijit Avasthi, Founder, Sideways; Raj Nair, former CEO and CCO, Madison BMB; Burzin Mehta, Chief Creative Officer, Gozoop Group; George Kovoor, CCO Wavemaker India; Joji Jacob, Creative Partner & Co-founder, BLKJ Havas, Singapore; Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous; and Anurag Agnihotri, Managing Partner (Creative), Ogilvy West.
“Regarding the number of entries, we have received 500 plus entries from all states of South India. Majority of entries are from Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telengana,” said Nair.
“Regarding the categories, we had a special session with many of our judges to arrive at a new category list. This was also done keeping in mind the emerging digital activity and the number of agencies that have come up in the last few years. This would also become an award for this new medium which is growing at such a fast rate. Since there are no organised forums for digital agencies, it will take some time for us to reach them in a big way, but it is likely to be a huge category in the years to come. This year, even though there were a good number of entries in the digital category, it was not to our expectation. I am certain in the next few years this will become a dominant category,” said Sreenath Gopi, Secretary, Pepper Awards.
“Our chief guest has served on all major advertising juries worldwide, including Cannes, Clio, D&AD, often the first Indian or Asian to do so. He has won over 150 national and international awards for his work. He has also agreed to have an interactive session prior to the awards ceremony with the young talents in advertising as well as students from advertising and mass communication institutes. We expect this session would gather many young talents and students with whom Mohammed Khan would share his decades of experience in the ad industry,” said Nair.
Feedback: [email protected]
