Come December 21, and all eyes will be on the winner of this year’s IMPACT Person of the Year (IPOY) award. Each year, the award is given to a person or group of persons who have made maximum impact on and influenced the industry through their contributions to the Media, Marketing and Advertising world.
Nominations are based on a person’s substantia contribution to his/her own business as well as industry bodies and the possibility of practices adopted by him/her having far-reaching effects in the foreseeable future. The esteemed nominees for this year’s Impact Person of the Year award are:
1. Ambika Soni - Until recently Union Cabinet Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Soni is credited with pushing the agenda for digitization of television in India, and finally making it official, with definite deadlines.
2. Man Jit Singh – Heading one of India’s largest broadcasting companies – Multi Screen Media (MSM) – CEO Man Jit Singh is the brain behind the revival of Sony Entertainment Television (SET).
3. Punit Goenka - Managing Director and CEO of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL), Goenka has been instrumental in steering the ZEEL empire to international markets and new frontiers of success and profitability.
4. Sanjay Gupta – Gupta, CEO of Jagran Prakashan Limited (JPL), is wholetime Director and Editor of Dainik Jagran, arguably one of the world’s largest read dailies. He has been expanding the group’s portfolio of profit-making newspapers with great success.
5. Vikram Sakhuja - Sakhuja, CEOdesignate of Maxus Worldwide, is the first India-based CEO of a global media agency, and his appointment is seen as a landmark development for the media agency business in India.
6. Vineet Jain: Vineet Jain is the Managing Director of Bennett, Coleman & Co, and is the group’s chief strategist, marketing visionary and editorial architect, credited with rapidly expanding it into new arenas and revamping the group’s stable of daily newspapers into cutting-edge brands.
As we gear up for the big night to be held in Mumbai this year, here’s taking a close look at the selection process, handled by IMRB International. It is divided into three stages:
Phase I: Inviting nominations by way of an industry-wide poll carried through the exchange4media group of publications.
Phase II: The poll data was collected on the IMRB server. All responses received were validated by removal of duplicate votes and data cleaning. The result of all valid responses from the poll, throwing up a list of top contenders, was compiled and sent to IMPACT. The editorial team at IMPACT evaluated the list, and came up with the final list of nominees. IMRB and IMPACT agreed on a set of parameters on which the top contenders would be rated by respondents in the final phase.
Phase III: Final voting by a select few from across the Advertisement, Media and Marketing fraternity, on the basis of personal e-mail invites sent by IMRB. The respondents vote on the nominations – on the basis of the pre-decided parameters – and pick one to three person(s) to be the IPOY. IMRB collates the data, giving due weightage to ranks 1, 2 and 3 and together with IMPACT’s editorial team, analyses it to arrive at the Impact Person of the Year.
Wait for December 21 to know the winner!
LINE OF AWARDEES
Started in 2005, the first IPOY award was given to the then CEO of Star India Network, Peter Mukerjea, followed by Editor-in-Chief of CNN IBN, Rajdeep Sardesai in 2006. Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman, UB Group, received the award in 2007, while two concurrent awards were given in 2008 to Raghav Bahl, Founder of Network18 and Lalit Modi, then IPL Commissioner. Rajesh Kamat, CEO of CA Media and Uday Shankar, CEO of Star India, won IPOY awards in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Last year too, two people were honoured with the IPOY award - advertising genius Agnello Dias of TapRoot India and the then Group CEO of Network18 & Viacom18, Haresh Chawla.
