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Abby-Grabbies of Advertising

A report on this year's Abby Awards for advertising. Some surprises, some well-expecteds.

By Dipayan Baishya

Abby Awards: Creative glory

The smartest thing that the Advertising Club of Bombay has done in recent memory is the rebranding (or branding actually) of its annual awards - the Abby Awards. Or, for short, the Abbies. Not quite the Oscars, but the Ad Club's awards show has certainly been gaining on the pomp scale ever since.

And that's good. This is advertising, remember? So bring on the smoke and mirrors, turn on the strobes, and let the trumpets blare. And if dancing girls is a little too much for something as serious as business, let's have Diana Hayden as the anchor. And if people complain about repetition, get the dayya-nayya girl Aishwarya Rai next time round. As anchor. Or maybe juror (if good enough for Cannes, why not the Abbies?).

That'll do the differentiation job, given that the 'men in black' from O&M are going to take all the prizes away - and everyone knows that long before the show. This is advertising, remember?

Or is it media? Judging by the predominance of media men on the dais --- just Kunal Dasgupta of Sony and Pradeep Guha of Bennett Coleman, actually, but that's quite a power punch if you think about it --- you would be forgiven for mixing up your industries.

Of course, the audience game is the audience game. And why just media, there's another industry that's drawing increasingly on advertising (Ms Bright-eyes who kisses the Wall's Cornetto in the 'train' spot is the latest model to have turned film star). Or is it the other way round? Whatever. The audience is the audience, at the end of the day. So it's hardly surprising that the story of the evening was not the endless succession of O&M wins, but the hot new star in the advertising firmament. Or team of stars, really - on the Coca-Cola account.

Yes, that's what explained the presence of cine actor Aamir Khan as the show's special invitee. Aamir Khan of the 'Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola' fame (this is advertising, remember?). After years and years of struggling, the world's top brand has finally cracked the ever-so-complex Indian market. Good. And Prasoon Joshi of McCann-Erickson, the man behind Aamir's Coca-Cola success, won the Best Copywriter of the Year award - to thunderous applause. Call it rustic chic. The campaign featuring the 'carbon chhaap' (carbonpaper-like impression, that is, of a threatened slap) is evidently a roaring hit even with Mumbai's sophisticates.

Just one campaign can turn an agency's fortunes around, for sure. So McCann had much to cheer about, though O&M took home the largest haul to emerge as the Agency of the Year, yet again. Good going. Enterprise Nexus and Mudra followed. Lowe, by the way, stayed away from the show - in protest. The creative lights of this agency are known to harbour grave misgivings about the sort of ads that find favour with juries. The Ad Club, in defence, says that advertising is advertising, and all ads get a fair evaluation.

By the way, an interesting Abby winner this year was the campaign for TV Today's news channel, Aaj Tak, which bagged three awards for its quirky retro-look spots offering to open the viewer's eyes ('aankhen khol de'). It has been described as one of the funniest campaigns in a long time.

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