MUMBAI—A public education campaign that drove real behavior change in the state of Bihar was the big winner at this evening’s South Asia SABRE Awards ceremony, which took place at the Hard Rock Café in Mumbai and was attended by more than 200 of India’s leading public relations professionals.

“Tobacco Free Bihar,” conducted by Advantage Services on behalf of Cancer Awareness Society/CTFK, beat out five other contenders for the Platinum SABRE Award. The five other finalists:

  • Banking Giant SBI Wins Over Indian Millennials—State Bank of India with Adfactors PR
  • Dettol: Banega Swachh India—Reckitt Benckiser / Dettol with Integral PR Services
  • GrowthEnabler: A Start-Up to Help Other Start-Ups—GrowthEnabler with Integral PR Services 
  • Never Get Lost Again—Ducere Technologies with Adfactors PR
  • Putting a Halo Around Humanities—Ashoka University with Genesis Burson-Marsteller

“All of these campaigns delivered outstanding business results,” said Paul Holmes, CEO of The Holmes Report.” But the ‘Tobacco Free Bihar’ campaign stood out for motivating impressive behavior change around a challenging issue in a difficult market. It impressed all the judges who saw it.”

Other major awards included a CEO of the Year trophy for Vijay Shekhar Sharma of ecommerce website Paytm; a Company of the Year award for Godrej for “Re-Imagining PR to Build Corporate Reputation”; and an Indian Consultancy of the Year award for Avian Media.

Clients of Adfactors took home six trophies, while clients of Avian Media earned six awards; Advantage Services and its clients took home awards in three categories; Genesis Burson-Marsteller, Integral PR and Weber Shandwick helped their clients to two trophies each.

A list of winners can be found here.