Mumbai: WATConsult, the digital and social media agency from Dentsu Aegis Network led the Indian tally at Epica Awards by winning 3 out of the 9 awards won by Indian agencies in total. WATConsult’s #PowerlessQueen bagged 2 Golds and 1 Silver metal, making it the best performing and highest awarded Indian agency at the award show. Founded 31 years ago, Epica is the only worldwide creative award show judged by journalists from the marketing, design and advertising press. The award show received 4020 entries from 69 countries this year.

Not only this, but #PowerlessQueen also won under the category ‘Call to action’ along with 3 honours in 3 other categories at Shortys Awards for Social Good. Agency's another campaign, #WhyDontYou, also stood-out and bagged one metal at the Shortys Awards for Social Good. The former campaign, was also a winner for creative effectiveness and was a highly praised campaign for the category ‘campaign of the year’ at Mumbrella Asia awards 2018.

So, in summary, it was a golden weekend for WATConsult as it bagged 6 awards along with 4 esteemed honors at three international award shows; Epica Awards, Shorty Awards For Social Good and Mumbrella Asia awards.

Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, WATConsult said, “It gives me great pleasure to share that WATConsult has won 6 metals and 4 honours in 3 international award shows across three continents in a span of just 24 hours! Most importantly, such recognition not only makes us proud at International platforms but also portray and raise the power of Indian digital work done globally. Standing out twice as the only Indian agency to have maximum wins, in Epica Awards and Shortys Awards for Social Good, shows how the passion of creating something out-of-the-box is growing at WATConsult. We are delighted and hope to keep raising the bar."

Launched on the occasion of ‘Women’s Day’, ‘#PowerlessQueen, created for Project Nanhi Kali – an NGO that aims to provide education to under-privileged girls, has been creating a stir in the market since its launch. The campaign highlighted the plight of Indian women via a game of chess wherein one player had to play with a Powerless Queen, i.e. a queen who couldn’t move while the other player has a powerful queen. Queen being the most powerful piece on the chessboard, #PowerlessQueen was a metaphor for how real-life queens i.e. women in India are treated and rendered powerless.

Rolled out as a #PowerlessQueen challenge across India, the campaign registered donations worth 40,000 hours of education for underprivileged girls with more than a million views on video. Many international Chess Grandmasters organically got involved and endorsed the campaign like; World Rapid Chess Champion 'Viswanathan Anand'; Hungarian Woman Grandmaster ''Anna Rudolf'; Hungarian Woman Grandmaster and Ambassador of Chess and Education & UN Planet 50-50 Champion 'Judit Polgar'; Two-time United States Women's Champion 'Jennifer Shahade'; Four-time Dutch Chess Champion 'Anish Giri' and Five-time Danish Chess Champion and current coach to World number one Magnus Carlsen, 'Peter Heine Nielsen'. School students from across schools participated in a Powerless Queen Challenge organized by The Chess School of India and The Coach Crew.A chess club in France hosted a #PowerlessQueen challenge. #PowerlessQueen will soon be rolled out as gender-equality teaching tool across schools in India.

#WhyDontYou, a campaign/initiative that was launched on the occasion of 'World Donor Day' highlighted the importance of blood donation and how transgender community who wants to donate is unable to while people like us who have the privilege to donate, tend to ignore. For the same we partnered with Rudrani Chhetri and her transgender modeling agency to create a campaign video which urged people to get up and donate. The campaign recorded more than 5000 tweets, 31.2 Million organic impressions, 1.4 MN video views and 400 units of blood in a single day.

Dominating the world across 3 continents, the agency clearly made the entire Indian ad fraternity proud. Conducted in 3 different continents including Netherlands (Epica Awards), New York (Shorty Awards For Social Good) and Singapore (Mumbrella Asia), these award shows aim at rewarding outstanding creativity in their respective fields every year.