Jury appointed for IAA Creative Lantern Awards

The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) has announced an 'Elite Jury' to judge the prestigious IAA Creative Lantern Awards.

International Advertising Association (IAA) rescheduled the Creative Lantern Awards for January 23, 2009 due to the terror attacks in the city. The awards were scheduled for November 28 in Mumbai.

The IAA and The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), headed by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, have come together to give away the award for the Lighting A Billion Lives campaign, which would be to mobilise funds for a communication programme in order to aid the 400 million Indians who do not have access to electricity.

The winner will be announced on January 23 and the entries were called from across the advertising fraternity. A panel of judges shortlisted five entries.

Raj Nayak, president, India chapter, IAA, says, "This event will now symbolise the capacity of the city of Mumbai to bounce back from any adversity, and will be dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai."

The jury will be chaired by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, winner of the Nobel Prize as chairman IPCC and Director General of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute).

This 'Elite' Jury will consist of people like Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman, Aditya Birla Group; Nitin Paranjpe, CEO, Hindustan Unilever; Naina Lal Kidwai, group general manager and country head, HSBC companies in India; columnist Shobhaa De; director and actor Farhan Akhtar; Jaideep Bose, editor, The Times of India Group; Piyush Pandey, chairman, Ogilvy & Mather; Pradeep Guha, convenor of the jury and IAA Area Director, Asia Pacific; Raj Nayak, CEO, NDTV Media and president of IAA, India Chapter.

The 'Elite jury' will review five shortlisted entries and select the winning campaign for parameters like execution and implementation.

Raj Nayak, president of IAA, India Chapter said that he was confident that the Elite Jury would deliberate and pick the one that most aptly reflects the aspirations of TERI and works best to contribute and fulfill the goals set by the 'Lighting a Billion Lives' programme.

The Creative lantern award is a public service initiative that was initiated when Dr R K Pachauri, met IAA members last year, and made a case for the role of the common man in changing his outlook and life processes to include energy conservation in their daily lives.

This meeting lead to the India Chapter of the IAA and TERI embarking on an ambitious communications programme that could help change the lives of about 400 million Indians who have absolutely no access to electricity at all.

The role of the winning creative communication is be bring about social awareness, mobilise citizens and corporates to come together to contribute to the "Lighting a Billion Lives" programme -- to distribute cost-effective, rechargeable solar lanterns that could provide clean lighting to these about 78 million deprived Indian households. Working with NGOs, TERI has already begun creating the infrastructure for installing solar panels, distributing solar lanterns and managing the operation in identified villages.