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Victoria

Seldom does the advertising industry rally around and doff its hat to any one individual in the fraternity.

When it does, you know there is something unique in that persona.

The late Subhas Ghosal is one such person.

For those youngsters in the profession who might have missed the era he lorded over, Subhas was the legendary head of Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA), now JWT. He built and steered the fortunes of what would grow into an advertising behemoth. From whatever one has heard, and it is not just from Thompson loyalists, Subhas was a rare gem.

The foundation

The Subhas Ghosal foundation has been set up by a group of communication professionals who subscribe to the values the man stood for. While it does have the likes of Mike Khanna and Ivan Arthur from JWT, it also includes people like Gerson Da Cunha, the veteran advertising and theatre personality K. Kurian (who ran Radeus), and Titoo Ahluwalia, the market research czar.

Subhas believed that advertising professionalism was a multi-faceted thing that meant excellence based on knowledge, aesthetics, business integrity, honesty, a sense of decency, effectiveness, mutual respect and the fact that good business goes hand in hand with good human relationships.

Well, that about sums up the ideals everyone in the industry should strive for.

Memorial lecture

Gurcharan Das delivered the annual Subhas Ghosal Memorial lecture. The event was sponsored by Rajasthan Patrika. Titoo did a marvellous job as the master of ceremonies, though he gave the sponsors a couple of anxious moments by forgetting to call them up for a memento. He graciously made up for the oversight, though.

The crowd was an interesting mix and included some of the stalwarts mentioned as members of the foundation: Kaushik Roy, the marketing head of Reliance Infocom, Dolly Thakore, Arvind Sharma of Leo Burnett, Ramesh Narayan of Canco Advertising, M. G. Parameswaran, President of AdClub Bombay, and Goutam Rakshit of Advertising Avenues, to name a few.

Gurcharan Das wore the benevolent smile of a true preacher as he discoursed on `Nishphala Karma' and the message of the Bhagavad Gita as applied to business. If lectures of this kind are going to be an on-going feature, it could be suggested that the venue could be changed to somewhere more appropriate like the Azad Maidan or wherever Swami Chinmayananda used to deliver his sermons. The rush to the bar immediately after the discourse — sorry, lecture — brought back the ambience and bonhomie one normally associates with an ad industry event.

Education workshops

The AAAI had run a superb series of workshops called `The Block' sometime ago. They had been able to get the top creative names in the business to speak to middle-ranking creative personnel about their views on creativity and trends in the creative arena. Now the AdClub is cranking up its Continuing Education Programme. A one-day workshop on CRM by John Goodman of O&M should really give it an impetus. Looks like O&M is really stepping out to wow the industry. This is also Goodman's first foray into industry affairs. Things could get very interesting.

Triple A Awards

The latest on these awards is that the judging is now over. December 3 will reveal all. If we don't do it before that! Just kidding. We would hate to spoil the element of surprise.

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