After looking at the other winners, we must say Buddy is keeping us in good company

Webchutney got its share of metals at Goafest 2012. We won two silvers for our work on Turquoise Cottage and a Bronze for the very cool game we built for Nokia, Agent.One. Not to forget, 8 of our entries made it to the final shortlist this year. The award season has only started, here’s hoping for more laurels this year.

The work that won:

1: Buddy Stamp – Silver in the Best Application for Mobile category

2: Turquoise Cottage Website – Silver in the Best Corporate Website category

3: Nokia Agent.One – Bronze in Branded Content for the Internet – Branded application/tool/mash-up

ps: As you read this, the author is trying hard to get you the after-party scoop and pictures; the madness that followed post our win. But the creative director is closely guarding them with his life. Hmm…We wonder why!

Sidharth Rao, Founder & CEO of Webchutney, said, “Ram and his team have built an amazing business from an idea a few years ago. We are very proud and delighted to have believed in Networkplay’s vision from the first day. A partnership with a leading global company, Gruner + Jahr, will propel Networkplay on a stronger, higher growth path”

Sarbvir Singh, Managing Director of Capital18, said, “Ram and his team have built an outstanding business in a very short span of time. We wish them and G+J continued success in India. This transaction is an important milestone for Capital18 as we continue our journey of working with extraordinary entrepreneurs in the media and entertainment space in India.”

Rammohan Sundaram, Founder & CEO of Networkplay, said, “This is an exciting phase in our journey and we are delighted to partner with a global company that shares our ambition and vision. We are privileged to be part of the Bertelsmann group with operations across the world. We believe this partnership is a testimony to our unique proposition, strong execution capabilities and the extraordinary team we have built over the last few years. This is a positive outcome for all our stakeholders, especially our customers as we now aim to enhance our innovative and execution capabilities in line with the world class standards and experience that Gruner + Jahr brings to this partnership. I would like to thank Sidharth and Sarbvir for having the confidence in us and helping us grow an idea to what Networkplay is today. They shared our enthusiasm and vision and have been great partners through this journey”.

Gruner + Jahr is one of the world’s leading media groups and its Electronic Media Sales (EMS) division is leading in the digital advertising space in Europe. G+J recently acquired the majority of MaXposure Media and this is their second strategic investment in India.

Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein, Executive Board Member and President of Gruner + Jahr International, said, “The expansion of our activities in India is clearly in line with the strategic priorities of Gruner + Jahr. After the acquisition of MaXposure in the print space, G+J is now acquiring NetworkPlay, one of the fastest growing digital companies in India and follows its strategy to build a combined portfolio of print and digital media activities.”

Kuldip Singh, CEO, Gruner+Jahr India will join the board at Networkplay. Kuldip Singh will also be the CFO of NetworkPlay and he added, “NetworkPlay was one of the several companies we were looking at when we decided to build our digital business in India. We zeroed in on NP simply because of the brilliant team along with the strategic vision that Ram had for the company thus far, also they have shown very attractive growth in revenues in such a short time of their existence. We are extremely thrilled to bring NetworkPlay under the G+J Group and I am confident that with our strategic vision this company will consolidate its leadership position going forward”.

BMR Advisors was the exclusive advisor to Capital 18 and Webchutney on this transaction.



We made a ‘Green Carpet’ entry to the venue and walked away with 4 Golds and 1 Silver award! The showstopper at the awards ceremony was our digital campaign for Nokia - I Recycle my Phone. Nokia won Gold for ‘Green brand of the Year’ and the campaign fetched another Gold in the ‘Digital’ category. It also won Silver in ‘Campaign of the Year’ category. The supremely talented folks who worked on the campaign include, Gurbaksh Singh, Sattvik Mishra, Abhishek Saxena, Bhupesh Lohani and Sayak Basu. But it doesn’t end here, not just yet.

Abhishek Saxena won ‘Young Green Art Director of the Year’ for the same campaign. Soon as news of victory broke to him, eyewitnesses and onlookers claim that the elated young designer (known for his usually cool & calm temperament) erupted like a hormone-crazed volcano yelling ‘ab meri shaadi pakki, saalon’ (I’m gonna get married now, bitches!) on repeat mode. As congratulatory calls poured in, he was seen wiping tears of joy, grinning ear to ear with a dangerously edgy look of satisfaction on his face. Even Einstein was half-crazy, you know!

Towards the end of the glorious evening, everyone waited with baited breath for that one final announcement that would set off the crowds in a tizzy. Whispers and murmurs of “Who could it be? Is it them? No it’s us fo sho, man” floated around moments before the “Agency of the Year” was announced. And of course Yours Truly walked away with it!

The insanely delighted Creative Director at Webchutney, Gurbaksh Singh, had to be grabbed and calmed down for a quick quote.

“Oops we did it again!” was all he gasped with a sheepish grin on his face.

2012 was off to a great start with Webchutney winning ‘Agency of the Year’ title at WAT Awards in January. And, winning ‘Agency of the Year’ at Olive Crown was the cherry on the cake!

Thank you Olive Crown Awards for honoring our hard work and kudos to the team for pulling off yet another kick ass victory!

Stay tuned for more excitement and disruption coming soon from your favorite digital agency!

So, around a month ago, it was probably Kite mating season, and these two lovely kites decided to grace Webchutney Mumbai office by building a cute nest at the far corner of our office terrace. At first we were like “awwwe… choo chweeet”.

And then slowly, like the ungrateful hot-blooded carnivores that they are, they started “marking their territory”. First, they started attacking anybody who wandered near the section of our terrace where their nest was situated. Then slowly, they started expanding their Kite-dom and we, the dominant species, were pushed back further and further. Currently, even if you’re just standing near the terrace door, without even stepping on the terrace, you’ll get a claw to the face. #faceclaw

And the worst part is… they ate all the pigeons who were living on our terrace peacefully! Tikku, Chikku, Mikku, Pikku, Nikku… they’re all gone now… smiling down upon us from bird Heaven. You’ll all be remembered, my fair feathered friends.

We’re just waiting for the young kites to grow up, learn how to fly and then migrate wherever the hell they’re supposed to. Otherwise if they’re not planning to move somewhere else soon, then these birds of prey better pray… because they don’t know who they’re dealing with!!! We can create a website about kites filled with flashing lightning background gif, marquee text effects and javascript blinking texts that uses only comic sans fonts and is compatible only with IE 6 and below, such that every kite around the world will die of utter embarrassment. Seriously kites, don’t mess with us!

This is exactly how the Webchutney’s Servicing^ trip can be described best as… No one had any clue what to expect; as our Exec. Creative Director had shared this Art of Servicing book just a week before. Freshers suspected a viva.. well there was something else in store.. something more fun – THE FUZZY DUCK!!

So what is this Fuzzy Duck? Fuzzy Duck is what we would name this trip where all the different avatars of Chutneyites came oozing out!

The trip started with the happiest looking faces on the 5^th floor^& of Webchutney Bombay** office. The happiness could easily be compared to the ones you see on POW’s faces when they are released after years of relentless torture. It definitely was the most enthralling experience for them seeing us out by 5pm. So there we go. Nishi Kant – our Executive Creative Director – The man responsible for stuffing me with all the ladies on our way to lonavala(not that I am complaining ) – it actually made onlookers wonder what a player I was when we got out of the car for a leak-break. I’m loving it!!

This is what i was talking about!

The Ladieezzzz

As we were about to reach, came in the news that the last lot – Punkaj Saini^$ & boys were still in office as he was stuck in some big-ass meeting, getting in some moolah. The first lot had already reached and were 3 down by the time me & ladies(I am so loving it as I type) reached. Freshers believed he’s gonna ask some questions based on the book. Well the questions did come in.. but not really by the book –

“Kya peeyega Behen@#$%??”

“Saaley sirf juice maarega, daru nahi??”

Before we go any further I would like to highlight a personal achievement here – a nice 20m reverse on an effing national highway! OK now we can go ahead..

As soon as we reached all we had to do was change into our night suits, pick up a glass, pour a drink and CHILL! As we spoke like we knew everything and anything on this planet Earth there was someone who reached before the last lot – the very cool Black Cat! She was the one who never gave up and kept a very watchful eye on us – making sure no one drinks more than the other’s capacity

3 down!

Then finally comes in the last lot. We were all very sure Samir made Vijay make a proposal on their way to lonavala^^. The new boy made a killer entry – changed to his shorts, came in with glass filled with transparent liquid looked more like “poor guy is so tired, finally a glass of water for him”. With Nishi asking him “Saaley sirf paani piyega?” he smiles and replies “Vodka hai, neat!” Nishi’s eyes pops out; so does the word “NICEEEEE!!!!”

While the new guy was busy gulping down neat shots; Samir came up with the Eureka moment of the trip. 5 magic words set the mood “Let’s play Fuzzy Duck game”! Well with everyone struggling to keep up with the fuzzy duck game, Punkaj was happy-high with 2 red-bulls cans emptied.

Men!

The man everyone's talking about!

Everyone gradually started crashing post some awesome dinner; we decided otherwise. Cards it was & flash was the game. Everyone checks in with tokens worth 20 bucks and that was the last time all of us saw some money in our hands. Came in the devil – Yash; the solitudinarian that he is when it comes to making money was a complete one-man-show winning everything that was there on offer. Finally we decided it call it a day after some immoderate laughter during the ghost stories session which ended at about 5 am.

Gone in a flash!

Money gulper

Then the next big thing happened on a lovely Saturday morning. PAINT-BALL! The intensity on the field was nothing less than one could experience on an actual field. My team with Gautam leading the pack and big players like Nishi & Punkaj was the clear favorite. However, some high-energy action from Samir, Vijay, Yash very well complimented with Neha & Vidhi were anything but underdogs. Though we won the capture the flag contest; they very well made sure we run out of bullets to emerge victorious in the Last Man Standing Contest. Prime highlights can be seen in the pictures with some really good head-shots courtesy Samir & Vijay^%.

Timeout then majorly comprised of chilled beer, good food again and some hard-core art of chilling. The evening was well spent as we drove around passing a million maganlal chikki marts to find the one, only and infamous COOPER CHIKKI. After which we drove up to Tiger Point, where it was chilly cold and there were more than a million stars (A sight all Bombayites would truly appreciate). As we reached, Chotta Sandeep, followed us till we got a parking spot and sorted us out with Chai and chairs as we chilled, froze literally as we took in the sight, it was beautiful and so peaceful. All we had to do “CHOTTTAAA SANDEEPPPP!!”and that light footed guy was up there with his top-notch service.

The night was very well complimented with smooth vodka, whisky whatever we could lay our hands on and of course the chilled weather which made sure that even the macho-est of us had to grab a blanket. Multiple games of rummy were played we here everyone’s ”Integrity”*** remained intact. Following which the most scrumptious meal of the trip was eaten. Nishi’s special chicken curry which we had with Dal Chawal, it was hot, spicy and flavorful – just how we like it.

There couldn’t have been a better end to the trip, with the garma garam chicken curry, sipping on our drinks and playing cards under the stars. The house was perfect, it wasn’t too crowded, the balcony area was perfect for are evening chilling scenes, but most of all the people made this trip. Whether it was Samir’s integrity or Thana’s Cooper Chikki or Simreen’s hazaar pictures or crazy team versus team paint-ball it was the entire servicing team coming together, kicking back, and chilling the weekend away.

DISCLAIMERS

* No duck was hurt, killed or fucked during this trip. The phrase FUCK the DUCK is completely fictional and Webchutney does not endorse any sexual assaults on the ducks

^ Rare species which are hated on the 5^th floor of Webchutney. They normally believe the conference room on their requires an IQ more than 120.

& Consists of people who really don’t really love the rare species we just talked. Though they have extremely high creative quotient; still are quite apprehensive to come on the 4^th floor as they believe servicing a blood sucking species.

** I personally like calling it Bombay. Anyone who finds that offending – “Kiss my ASS”!

$ the man known for his crazy-ass driving. It is a known fact that he can park 2 cars in a mere 50sq.ft space. His love for Axure^# spread like a viral in chutney.

# Killer software which everyone from the species mentioned above tried their hands on. In fact Tushar went a step ahead a created a beta site on it to know the client was just playing around with little ass.

^^ I am sure Vijay just nodded.

% We did give them back; with Samir going home with a bleeding finger and Ramprasad(name changed) getting one right besides his balls.

@ Word hot clearly signifies the temperature at which it was cooked

*** A rare quality assumed to be lacking in Agencies

Every once a while, a hero emerges… who gets trapped smack-in-the-middle of crazy whacky stuff @Webchutney. Enter Kima, a.k.a our Creative Trailblazer who’s inspired the ‘Keme’ contest. Yep, he’s the  ‘Flying One’ in all the photographs. Incidentally, he’s a hero back home. Read all about him here.

When Vishnu and Nihal (both Copywriters) struck gold with one of Kima’s old photographs caught in an awkward pose, they went beserk. What else would you expect?! And here’s the result of wild untamed creative ingenuity thrown open at you.

You may be the king of wit or the queen of badass, who knows. But can you live up to our challenge? And oh! Kima’s also participating. There you go, we just raised the bar, higher!

That’s okay dude, but Wtf is ‘Keme’?

Haha, pretty simple actually.

Kima + Meme = KEME (cedit goes to Abbas for cracking it!)

For the uninitiated, a meme’s an idea or phenomena that goes viral and becomes insanely popular on the web, like viral videos, images, catchphrases, celebs etc. Like Kolaveri or the Success Kid. Dig up other popular memes here.

Cut the crap, how do i win this?

Just follow the lead:

- Pick your favourite from the seven photographs below.
- Think of an original ‘Kill-er’ punchline to go with the pic.
- Submit the photograph with your punchline on our Facebook Page (also shower your louuve and Like it!)
- Repeat with another picture if you want!

Rules:

- Contest open to ALL, excluding the judges ofcourse.
- Last date for entry submission is January 15, 2012.
- Duplicate entries not allowed i.e. you can’t pick the same photo twice to submit. But you can submit any or all of the seven individually.
- Winners will be announced on January 30, 2012.

Win exclusive Webchutney merchandise! Yeah, aint nuffin like anything you’ve seen before. Even if you’ve heard that before… We’ll keep you hooked, don’t worry

Here’s your creative canvas:

‘Keme’ Contest Photo 1

Keme Contest Photo 2

Keme Contest Photo 3

Keme Contest Photo 4

Keme Contest Photo 5

Keme Contest Photo 6

Keme Contest Pic 7