The organisers of the Asia Pacific Effies have announced the shortlists for the 2020 edition.
Among the 122 finalists, 23 are from India.
Six of these are from The Leo Group. The agency has two shortlists each for Spotify's 'There's a playlist for that', P&G's 'Bittu' and HDFC Bank's '#StopMithani'.
McCann Worldgroup has five shortlists. Two of these are for Nestle for the entries 'Selling Coffee in a Tea Nation', 'Ok, Nestle: Tell me more about food'. The agency also has shortlists for Reckitt Benckiser 'Overcoming India's Toilet Divide', Bill & Melinda Gates' 'The Conversational Contraceptives' and Healthcare at Home's 'The Living Will'.
Hindustan Unilever has three shortlists. Two of them are for 'Eesar Ek Ibadat' and the other is for 'Embracing Dirt As An Act Of Faith'.
MullenLowe Lintas Group and Ogilvy have two shortlists each. MullenLowe's shortlists are for Unilever's 'Germ Nashini' and 'Mobile Doctarni'. Ogilvy's shortlists are for Castrol's 'Making an expert feel like expert' and 'Protecting the real engine of India'.
Other agencies among the shortlists are 82.5 Communications (Intelligent know the difference - Bisleri), Havas WW India (Right To Orgasm - Reckitt Benckiser), Infectious Advertising (BaatGharKi - UltraTech Cement), Grey (Barbershop Girls - Gillette) and WATConsult (Thanks a dot - SBI Life Insurance).
David Porter, awards chairman, said, "This year's judging was conducted under very different conditions and I would like to publicly thank the jurors, heads of jury and our great organising team for their pioneering work. This is probably the first time a major competition in our industry has been managed virtually, from end-to-end. We are all grateful to our diverse group of 190 jurors from 18 territories. They participated in two rounds of judging and completed the process with all the rigour that the Effies is rightly famous for. Evaluating so many high-quality entries has been a stimulating and rewarding experience for everyone involved. I am delighted to introduce our finalists and am looking forward to us unveiling the winners in September."
The awards gala, originally scheduled to take place in May 2020, will now be replaced by a virtual Awards Ceremony in September 2020.
