 So think of the number of times that you've laughed out loud when you were watching a witty ad and then you've gone ahead and shared that link with your friends on social networking sites. But then when you actually think about it, there is very little recollection of the product that was getting endorsed in that ad. Such ads may actually work from the creative point of view but the question is, did the brand really gain from it? It's this question that the FE Awards, organized by the Advertising Club, attempted to address. They focused on the effectiveness of the ad and not just the high points on a creative front. So who are the big winners this time and what went on behind the scenes? We tell you this in our top story. The FE's have been setting benchmarks for creativity for Indian advertisers and marketers for well over a decade now. With a list of distinguished winners over the years, the Awards have become a landmark annual event. In its 15th year, the FE Awards were organized on a larger scale than ever before. What has changed is the immense response that we have got. We have created new highs with 57 agencies participating and 603 entries which have broken all records. What has changed is the fact that this year the judging were not only in Bombay and Delhi but also in Bangalore. What has changed this time was the fact that we have had new categories. So all in all, it's been an exciting new year. There is no subjectivity in FE's. It's very different from judging a creative award where I guess you could say it's objective. It's clearly results. So it's results that have worked in the marketplace for either the brand or for the business and therefore the subjectivity is left out of it. It's a great combination of creativity and work that works in the marketplace because the entries are given along with the results. So I think it is the best in terms of advertising effectiveness in the country. I think the first thing is the identification of the problem and the big idea that the agencies have evolved and the translation of the big idea into its creative form is the flow right from conceptualization to completion. I think that's what completes the whole FE process because for every case that we evaluated as being part of the judging committee, they identified first the problem in the marketplace and then they said what they did and the results after that. So it's not about sales, it's about transformation or what the campaign did to transform or overcome the problem. It's very encouraging to see a huge jump in the number of entries. Twenty-eight percent is what they said today in the increase in the number of entries. So that's impressive and I'd like to see that increase to even greater heights. This focus on effectiveness makes the FE so relevant to marketers as well who depend heavily on creative agencies to build brands that can bring in volume growth. I think the ultimate test of a campaign success is in the market. So it is about making sure that business happens and campaigns build brands and businesses. That's the ultimate test. But the FEs are a good recognition of a campaign that works in the market and I think that's what they do best. It's not about just creativity but creativity that delivers in real life. Effectiveness of a campaign is judged in various ways, various matrices, but the one key matrices is it achieving what it's set out to achieve. And most often than not, we advertise so that consumers will buy your product. So if that's happening, then I guess it is achieving the objective that it's set out to do. As a digital player, we have a lot of visibility into the data that comes into our systems, which a brick-and-mortar company really doesn't have the privilege of getting from A to Z kind of data. So when I talk about effectiveness, it's actually the bottom lines for me. It's not even the leading variables. It's actually the business impact on my core matrix. So any campaign that we do is not measured on the leading variables, it's actually measured on the bottom lines or the core matrix that we focus upon. So that's efficiency for us. Highlighting the need for a robust partnership to truly create valuable and sustainable brands, the Agency of the Year award focuses on the client's side and Hindustan Unilever took home this one for the third year in a row. So we've always believed that you get as good advertising as you deserve. I think it's all about really packing in precision into the creative brief, ensuring that you are very clear about what's the end message you want to communicate, what is your brand character and what are the key metrics that you want to move. And I think then together a great partnership comes to fore, which enables us to deliver great effective advertising. On the creative front, an agency that was in the spotlight at the 15th edition of the FE award was the Mullen Low Lintas Group India, which swept up two of the most coveted awards, the Agency of the Year and the Grand FE for the paperboard brand. The FE is something that we seriously take. In fact, not just the India FE, we take the APAC FE, we take the global FE, all of them quite seriously, because we genuinely believe as an agency, effectiveness of the creative product that we put in the marketplace has to be evident and visible to all. And that's something that's hardwired into our culture and our DNA. For the simple reason, the client is spending lots of money behind their brands. They come to the agency for a creative solution, but clearly the operating word is solution, right? So either there's a problem or there's an opportunity that they want to unshackle. And we work very closely with the clients with the single-minded purpose of actually providing that solution that currently the brand is facing.