24 August,2018 11:43 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online desk
The mCube award won by mid-day.com
Mid-day.com was awarded the Best Digital Campaign for a Cause at the Masters of Modern Marketing awards ceremony held in Mumbai on August 23, 2018. Mid-day.com bagged the award for its 'Plastic Free with Sunday Midday' campaign.
In April this year, when the plastic menace was being hotly debated, the Sunday mid-day team came up with an idea to do a series of stories around weeding out plastic from our lives.
The idea was conceived by Gitanjali Chandrasekharan, and Aastha Atray Banan, Anju Maskeri, Jane Borges and Benita Fernando collaborated on it. This team gave two Mumbai families the #PlasticFreeWithSundayMidday challenge and had them survive without using any plastic in their daily lives.
Team Mid-Day with the award
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The struggle they faced, and the innovative solutions arrived at were documented in Sunday mid-day over a couple of weeks. SMD decided that a major part of the campaign would unravel on mid-day.com and our social media platforms. Members of the digital team, especially Veronica Jose, collaborated closely with team SMD on this.
The campaign included videos of the two families going about their day while tackling the challenge; an online poll where readers wrote in with solutions; and an interview with Dia Mirza, UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador on World Earth Day, discussing our initiative and the hazards of plastic. She went live from the Twitter Blue Room with Aastha. The 2 families communicated with mid-day readers through social media and live chat. Radio City's RJ Archana connected one of the family members to Deputy Municipal Commissioner Nidhi Choudhari to understand the BMC's stand.
The campaign was wrapped up with Ranjeet Jadhav from Mid-Day's City team going live from the Facebook office with lawyer-turned-saviour of Versova beach Afroz Shah, where he spoke of how plastic is the number one hurdle for a flood-free Mumbai.
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