Mktg - India;CNBC Awaaz Consumer Awards;Rewarding everyone's fav brands

Khushboo Tanna

The CNBC Awaaz Consumer Awards were held on Friday at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. The awards aim to honour India’s best preferred brands across categories such as consumer durables, telecom, FMCG, financial services, retail and automobiles. The winners were selected on the basis of a consumer study executed by The Nielson Company, which surveyed close to 10,000 respondents from 21 cities and 84 rural centres.The guests for the evening were Sharad Pawar, minister of consumer affairs and public distribution; Praful Patel, minister of state for civil aviation; V Vaidyanathan, executive director, ICICI Bank; Lalit Modi, chairman and commissioner of the Indian Premier League; and Hindi film actor Akshay Kumar. The awards category for consumer durables had two subcategories: Most Preferred White Goods Brand and Most Preferred Consumer Electronics Brand. Both of these were won by LG. The telecom category also had two subcategories: Most Preferred Cellular Service Provider, which was awarded to Airtel, and Most Preferred Handset Provider, which was won by Nokia.The FMCG category had three subcategories. Hindustan Unilever Ltd won two awards here, for Most Preferred Personal Care Brand and Most Preferred Home Care Brand. Parle won the award for Most Preferred Food and Beverage Brand. The next category was the consumer awards, which had the maximum number of subcategories – five. State Bank of India won the Most Preferred Bank award. Life Insurance Corp. of India grabbed the Most Preferred Life Insurance Policy award, while the Most Preferred Housing Loan award went to SBI Home Loans. The ICICI Group won two awards in this category, for Most Preferred Credit Cards (ICICI Bank Credit Cards) and Most Preferred Auto Loan (ICICI Bank Car Loans).The next category, retail, had three subcategories. Big Bazaar won the Most Preferred Multi Brand Food Retail Chain award and Café Coffee Day won the Most Preferred Fast Food and Beverage Chain award. The award for Most Preferred Lifestyle Brand went to Tanishq.In the Automobiles category, the Most Preferred Car Brand award went to Maruti, while the Most Preferred Two Wheeler Brand award went to Hero Honda.Three special awards were given to individuals who had made an outstanding contribution in their respective fields. Akshay Kumar won the award for Entertainment Brand Ambassador of the Year, while Lalit Modi won the award For Transforming Cricket in India. BSNL won the Hall of Fame award for maintaining its identity among the plethora of brands available in the market and for its high brand recall.The evening also saw an interactive session on Brand India, in which Anuradha Sengupta, editor and anchor, Storyboard, and Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman, , McCann Erickson, spoke about how brands need to connect with their audience. Joshi said that one needs to look at ads with either a cultural eye or an organism eye. He explained the concepts by citing examples. He said that when McDonald’s came to India, it promoted itself as a fast food chain, but now, it is positioned as a family restaurant. It had to change its positioning because in Indian culture, a family has its meals together. He gave also the example of Happy Dent White, which uses the organism approach, focusing on the person rather than the culture. He said the market is already cluttered with brands and people will always choose something that is close to their hearts and lives.Akshay Kumar agreed with Joshi’s viewpoint and said that he works only with brands that mean something, which is why he endorses only two or three brands.