A crown of olives

Last Friday, Mumbai played host to the fifth edition of The Olive Crown Awards. Billed as the only Asian awards show that salutes excellence in communicating sustainability, there was obviously a lot of expectation in the air. As the evening progressed several advertising truths came to light.

In a business where envy is of second nature to most professionals, this was an evening where ad men openly wore the colour of envy on their sleeve. Some were even wearing green on their heart. But when it came to putting out green messages, the ones that communicate an eco-friendly tone of advertising, the advertising industry disappointed.

Ad men are always blamed for not putting their money where their mouth is. In the case of the Olive Crown awards there was no question of money, as this is the only advertising awards show in India that does not charge any entry fee from participating agencies. Yet, when the number of entries in every other awards show is increasing year on year, the entries for the Olive Crown Awards 2015 were fewer than the previous year.

The big agencies – barring Ogilvy and RK Swamy BBDO – were missing in action and noise. The normally boisterous gang from Ogilvy quietly picked up its couple of awards and soon left. To be sure, the noise levels were down not because the green crusader of the year award went to Sumaira Abdulali whose Awaaz foundation has been at the forefront of fighting the noise pollution menace in Mumbai. (In fact, the entertainment of the evening was a noisy affair.)

The silver lining was that Olive Crown propped up new stars from outside the major advertising hubs, Mumbai and Delhi. One case in point was Stark Communications, an agency from Kerala that picked up two silvers for its work in God’s own country. It campaigns ranged from promoting cleanliness in the State to promoting tourism.

But the highlight of the evening was the young art director award which went to Aditi Chaddha for her work on the packaging of Lipton Green tea. In its quest to become a truly “green” brand in more ways than one, Lipton Green tea was looking at cutting the environmental footprint with its packaging. Chaddha came up with a simple idea that would cut down the size of a pack by more than 13 per cent. How? Normally all the tea sachets are stacked besides each other inside the box. Chaddha same up with a simple yet, bright idea of stacking the tea bags in a manner like shoes are stacked in a shoebox. In the new design, each tea bag sits alternately facing each other, giving consumer goods major Hindustan Unilever not just savings in packaging costs but also in transportation costs – the smaller the pack, the more you can transport a lot more in a single trip. This was the hue of green that Olive Crown would have been proud to salute.

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