POW WOW AWARDS 2010

When the WOW Events and Experiential Awards was constituted by Eventfaqs, the Event Industry was but happy. The BTL and Events domain has finally come of age that it needs recognition. The fabulous work produced by the hardworking and creative minds across the Industry for brand maintenance is well worthy of it. And honestly speaking, Event and Promotions is more like theatre when it comes to execution – it is logistically oriented, has no retakes, requires immense expertise and the process needs to be repeated. Recognition, it thus deserves.

Yesterday, was the 3rd edition of WOW Awards at the Andheri Sports Complex, Mumbai. A beautiful setup welcomed us and the evening was thankfully cooler. The evening had just begun with an Acrobatic performance ( I enjoyed the Drum Cafe more though last year), post which the emcee couple Siddharth and Amrita came onstage…and them was rampant in hitting out cheesy remarks (the script was rather teenage-ish and yawn. guys get on with it!). Then began the Award Ceremony of over 32 categories interspersed with cut short entertainment. Despite some initial bloopers in the cue-sheets and AV and emcee ‘disco-ordination’ (surprise, surprise – this felt like Ramdev Baba suffering muscle pain. Caw). But with the Awards being announced, and teams shrilling out whistles and drumbeats, the excitement kept the ceremony pumped up. (Thank God we had a variety of dias-takers coz Siddharth and Amrita took the cake!!)

Nothing beats team-work and the Event Industry is the proof of the chocolate pudding. There was a series of categories which got Bronze or Silver or Gold for Mudramax (9  metals), Encompass, Wizcraft, RN & C, Candid, PDM, Jagran, Cineyug….but the evening belonged to MudraMax and Encompass. As someone rightly pointed out onstage that the lines between ATL and BTL are blurring. Gods rejoice. Whilst the detailed winner list would be out pretty soon I suppose, the evening was otherwise quite entertaining. Sonal Mahapatra  kept us going for a while – with her private album songs et al. She is a good artist and emcee with a husky voice, a fine  balance of feminine beauty and yet the punch. A ballerina (guess it was Russian) was a fresh input and the littlest humour star (dunno her name) did a little Sakubai mimic for us – adorably funny.

Disappointingly the evening had to shut shop by 10ish, so the networking over cocktails and dinner did not happen, but the celebrations did not end there – and we just hope the enthusiasm continues the year around for better and more entries at the WOW Awards. This time it was about 700 plus which is a decent number. But let the numbers do the talking after a few years. For now the pow wow at the WOW Awards is a step further.