Thanks to humble coupon, Indian bags Oscar of advertising

This is considered to be the best year for India at the awards. Ogilvy & Mather India (O&M) won a silver and two bronze. The Silver Pencil was for O&M Mumbai’s work on The Indian Association for Promotion of Adoption & Child Welfare. Bronze Pencils were awarded to O&M Delhi for C Roy (Private Detective) and ORBO (Organs).

The previous highest award bagged by an Indian was three years ago by Piyush Pande from O&M India, when he won a silver medal at the One Show.

With this award, Kamble, who shifted from hometown Mumbai to the Big Apple two years ago, has emerged as the man tom watch in Indian advertising. ‘‘It gives a sense of self satisfaction and a pride that an Indian has done it,’’ Kamble told The Indian Express after winning the award.

Kamble was selected for the gold among thousands of competitors around the globe for his creativity and innovative work shown in planning an advertisement for a beer called Stella Artois. It is a popular European brand that is relatively new to America. Thirty-year-old Kamble, popular among his friends as Raj, created a small coupon for the beer, which got him the award.

‘‘My idea was to inform people that it’s worth it to pay a little more for a Stella,’’ he said referring to previous advertising campaigns of the beer which used the tagline ‘Reassuringly Expensive’. ‘‘Since America people are crazy about saving money with coupons from their local grocery stores, my copywriter, Anselmo Ramos (from Brazil), and I made small space print coupons that did the exact opposite—our coupons encouraged them to pay more money for a high quality Stella,’’ Kamble said.

Instead of saying ‘Save 20 per cent’, one of the ads said, ‘Spend 20 per cent more’. ‘‘It was very funny to me see how much the Americans love coupons. No matter how much they earn, they all seem to clip coupons from the newspapers. I used that insight to create the work,’’ Kamble said.A first-class student from the prestigious Sir JJ School of Arts, Mumbai, Kamble has won more than 100 national and international awards, including Cannes international awards, Clio Advertising Awards, CA. He started his career at Enterprise Nexus in Mumbai.

Kamble, who has spent last eight of his professional life traveling across the world and having stints with Lowe London and Paris, says he wants to return to India once his tenure at New York gets over.