Free Press Journal's "Free initiatives" campaign won gold at Adfest 2020, one of Asia's biggest and reputed advertising creative award shows. The campaign won in best use of print in media category created by Taproot Dentsu.
Adfest announced the winners of the Adfest 2020 Lotus Awards on Monday, February 15, 2021. These awards were scheduled to take place in Thailand last year, but were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. With 60 jurors, the judging process was guided by Grand Jury President Judy John, Global Chief Creative Officer at Edelman, Toronto.
Taproot Dentsu Mumbai and Dentsu Webchutney Mumbai were among seven offices whose winning works helped Dentsu win Adfest’s Network of the Year for the 4th year in a row.
Campaign: To lead the change was to be the change. So, we changed our masthead. We leveraged the word “free” in our brand name and replaced the word “press” with the problems we wanted to raise awareness about. Problems that India needs to be freed from. And problems that will get solved once certain sections are provided with certain facilities for free. On relevant days, both nationally and internationally, we dedicated our masthead to the problems that were being highlighted on that day. On World Food Day, for example, we changed our masthead to Free Food. On National Sports Day we were Free Sports, Free School on World Education Day, and Free Rights on Human Rights Day. Similarly, on Children's Day and National Farmers' Day, we were Free Child and Free Farmer respectively. But the masthead isn’t where we stopped. We dedicated the first two pages of our newspaper to the problem at hand. Pages which were filled with the perspectives, opinions, solutions of important opinion makers and influential celebrities.
"This is one of the simple and brave ideas and such do get applauded. This is brand centric which was born out of the name of the newspaper itself – Free Press. We live in an era where less is more. I’m delighted that this new-age approach was liked the minute it was presented to Abhishek Karnani, Director FPJ. And even more delighted to hear a gold award being given which is very rare at such award shows," said Santosh Padhi aka Paddy, Chief Creative officer & founder Taproot Dentsu.
