The Hindu Business Line : Creative guys take centre-stage

After the suits during the week, the last day of AdAsia saw the creative guys take centre-stage in untucked shirts, T-shirts, open-toed sandals, slippers and hot red pants.

Strobe lights and pulsating music — probably to keep a somewhat somnolent audience energised — added to the party atmosphere right from the start. The Asian showcase saw presentations from Pakistan, Philippines, Korea and Thailand. And the winner was Thailand, for its offbeat humour and very real advertising.

Speaker of the day on Thursday: Noel Coburn, although Christoph Prox and Rory Morgan were a close second. At the bookstall at the convention centre, where autographed books by the speakers could be bought at a 10 per cent discount, the most popular authors were Ricardo Semler, Jack Trout and Charles Handy, whose book, The Elephant and the Flea, is intriguing, at least for its title.

It was Singapore Night at the beautiful Jai Mahal on Thursday, as delegates got a sneak peek of AdAsia 2005. Still, Jaipur — for its sheer colour and magnificence as a venue — will be a hard act to follow, they admitted.

The jazz was smooth, but the delegates — whose numbers had swelled just a bit as more creative people flew in to attend the sessions of the last two days — did not get enough, and hopped on to Steam, a discotheque at the Rambagh Palace Hotel to party into the wee hours of the morning.

Bollywood's favourite bad boy, Gulshan Grover, was at the party on Thursday, and a speaker on Friday told the audience: "Gulshan told me that in the 15 years that he has worked in the film industry, he has never worked in an ad: isn't there one Indian company that can use a slightly edgier, bad-boy image?"

Three stalwarts of Indian advertising were conspicuous by their absence at AdAsia - Balki, Creative Director, Lowe, Prasoon Joshi, National Creative Director, McCann Erickson and Suhel Seth of Equus Red Cell. Was there an undercurrent running?

Quote of the day: "I've been to many ad parties - including 13 in Cannes — but never one where the beer ran out," said one foreign delegate of Thursday night's party. Cheers, Jaipur!

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