How a monkey won an award without entering
an award contest

A particular suburb of Chennai was being touted as the Detroit of India. Many Auto majors were setting up shop there. And naturally property developers were vying with each other to attract early customers. A major advertising blitz by one of the builders flaunted a movie star as the brand ambassador.

Our client on the other hand had a small property and a small budget. We had to come up with something that could take on a movie star.

We chose 'monkeys'!

We used the '3 monkeys' popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. The idea was to give people something that had a positive association of trust and dependability. The message was interesting. It said "Don't commit the 3 sins of home buying".

The monkeys won hands down against the movie star! The campaign created quite an impact. One of the key consequences, other than selling out all the apartments, was that we got the prestigious Kalki Award in Chennai. Unlike other awards, this award does not have 'paid entries'. A secret panel selects the best advertising work of the year. It was an honour to be chosen for this award in 2011 rather than the ad club variety which comes every year. The earlier year winner of this award was JWT and the year before that the award went to BBDO.