Microsoft Advertising Invites Marketers and Agencies in India to Join Global Creative Storytelling Contest
Do you think the storytelling element is missing from most marketing campaigns these days?
Microsoft Advertising’s storytelling platform aims to change that. Today they announced the launch of The Microsoft Advertising Story Awards, which is a creative storytelling contest. Marketing and branding professionals and agencies from 30 countries around the world have been invited to submit a campaign idea for a brand or non-profit of their choice.
The campaign idea needs to be a hypothetical digital media plan (a creative idea) for the brand or non-profit of the marketers choice. The media plan should address a ‘key business challenge’, which the organization is expected to face in 2012/13.
This award competition does not judge work which has already been done. Rather it provides branding experts a unique opportunity to create an innovative media plan for a brand using the technology and solutions offered by Microsoft Advertising. Mr. David Sable, Global Chief Executive Officer, Y&R (also the head of the global judging panel for this contest) summed it perfectly when he said, “Rather it is all about inspiring digital marketers to take their discipline back to its roots by developing fresh ideas that focus on reaching a target audience with a powerful story”. So a marketer can use MSN, Windows Mobile, Windows Live, Xbox, Microsoft Messenger, etc for this exercise.
Entries from India will be judged by some of the leading names in the country’s marketing industry, including Tushar Vyas, Managing Partner-South Asia of Group M, Anita Varma, Director, Digital Driftwood Pvt. Ltd and Florist Van Hjeist, General Manager-Marketing & Operations at Microsoft Corp.
The contest has been split into two phases. The first phase is the local heat. In case of India all entries need to be sent in by 31st March, 2012. The winners from every local heat will progress to the second stage, which will be the global finals. Two winners will be selected and will be crowned with the Global Microsoft Advertising Story Award 2012. The winners will also get a chance to travel to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012 as Microsoft Advertising’s guests, which is slated to take place between the 17th and 23rd of June in Cannes, France.
Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd’s Country Director of Advertising and Online, Mr. Neville Taraporewalla provided a great insight about Microsoft’s objective of launching this contest. He said, “At Microsoft Advertising, we have initiated this unique contest to highlight the wider focus of the business, which is to help brands step back from the clutter, and put storytelling back at the heart of marketing.”
For more information on how to enter the competition, check out the Microsoft Advertising Story Awards website.
To register for the Contest click here.
