The Advertising Agencies Association of India on Friday announced that the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022 will be conferred on advertising veteran Colvyn Harris. This is the highest honour to be given to an individual in India for his or her outstanding contribution to the advertising industry.
Speaking to Storyboard18, Harris says that he is delighted to be the recipient of the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award 2022.
“Across an enriching career, working with the best and brightest talented teams of clients, agencies and people, this is indeed an honour and a privilege that I am being conferred this award. I’m especially satisfied that my leadership built India’s finest agency, with global recognition during my tenure. I was fortunate to have had an amazingly successful career, and did my best in whatever roles WPP and JWT tasked me with. I’m happy today, the hard work and dedication has been recognised. To all who worked with me special thanks, this would not have been possible without the support of super talented teams in WPP, JWT and Contract,” he shares.
With over four decades of experience, Harris career was built in one company – JWT (now called Wunderman Thompson), a WPP Group Company, across varied roles, across India and JWT Sri Lanka where he was MD. He began his career at Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA). He went on to become the chief executive of Contract and then took over the role of JWT South Asia CEO. During his tenure he worked on brands such as Hero, GSK- Horlicks, Boost, Citibank, Ford, Airtel and Nestlé among others. He ended his career as executive director global growth and client development at JWT. He also served as the managing director (marketing) at L. Catterton Singapore, a global private equity company, part of LVMH, where his role was to help their investee companies working with the CEOs and CMOs for achieving their growth and branding objectives globally.
Harris has also been actively involved in advertising industry related matters both nationally and globally. He was a jury member at the Cannes Lions in 2015, in the effectiveness category. Harris was also president of the Advertising Agencies Association of India in 2010 and chairman Goafest in 2009 and 2010.
During his chairmanship, Goafest grew much faster and was recognised as the largest festival in India for celebration of creativity. Harris has been a speaker at London Business School, at the Wharton India Economic Summit, Spikes Asia 2010 and chairman of numerous forums, including a xpeaker at World Economic Forum India. He was a WPP nominee to the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Development Council for four years. Under his leadership, JWT won several global awards, numerous Cannes Lions, including India’s First Grand Prix while he was the CEO.
Anupriya Acharya, president, AAAI, said, “Colvyn Harris is in every sense a true pioneer and visionary. Apart from singlehandedly making JWT a top agency, he has also contributed significantly to the industry in various capacities, including as president of AAAI. He’s been a key driver and pivotal force in establishing Goafest as the largest advertising festival in India. I am pleased to say that the entire committee was unanimous in selecting Colvyn as this year’s AAAI’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner. He is truly deserving of this honour.”
The AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to an individual who has been a practitioner of advertising for twenty-five years. The awardee had been in the top management position; has been or continues to be an active participant in industry bodies and or made significant contributions in shaping the industry priorities which enabled the advertising industry to grow, prosper and become more professionalized.
Some of the past winners of this award include Subhas Ghosal, Alyque Padamsee, Mike Khanna, R K Swamy, Piyush Pandey, Sam Balsara, Prem Mehta, Roda Mehta, Ram Sehgal, Madhukar Kamath, Arvind Sharma and others.
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) is a not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed trade association of advertising agencies, formed in 1945, to promote their industry interests.