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Victoria

If you thought all that you could get from Leo Burnett were apples (the agency keeps them at the reception for anyone to help themselves), think again. A cute little well-designed box of chocolates landed up on some desks the other day. Opening the green satin ribbon, the lucky recipients saw a card that proclaimed "Victory tastes sweeter when it's shared."

The message explained that Leo Burnett had won 27 awards at the Advertising Agencies Association's Triple A awards this year. Just to make a point, it went on to say this was double the number of awards the nearest rival could win.

There were also chocolates (one did not get to count if there were 27, but one thinks there were), individually packed with the award-winning creatives on the wrapper.

Whoever thought up this idea, take a bow. People who got to tuck into the booty, and Victoria was not one of them, heartily agreed that the shared victory did, in fact, taste very sweet. Congratulations Leo Burnett, you are very gracious in your victory.

Now tell us what you will do after the Abby awards are declared next month. Remember, big brother O&M will also be participating. Be sure to tell us the tally. If you don't, I will.

Abby scam ads

Talking about the Abby awards, one reads that the awards have gone back to the stage where the percentage of scam entries received is so grossly high that agencies were first asked for a declaration of authenticity on a stamp paper; the agencies then demurely agreed to take a simple letter from clients that they in fact had authorised the release of the advertisement and had paid for it.

What does that prove? Well, last time around, the AdClub was not as harsh on scam ads as it was in earlier years. The AAAI was even more lax, in its desperation to get agencies back into its awards business. Clearly, the message that got across was that scam was okay now. Some agency people even publicly display their creative bankruptcy by saying that "it is accepted internationally." And agencies spent sleepless nights preparing "home-made" ads and twisted the arms of an obliging media to print the ads just once in some Ahmedabad or Rajahmundry edition.

What about the letter from the client? Well, now we know, it's really wrong to keep blaming only the poor agencies for their mad, unethical scramble for recognition. The clients seem to be a part and parcel of this venture.

As they say, "we're all in this together."

Did I tell you that the AdClub Bombay has shot off a letter to agencies' top bosses asking them to tick one square to indicate if they approve of scam ads or not? Well, you could have a democratic approval for scam now.

If you can elect scamsters as your leaders, why not vote for scam ads?

Ad Review

By the time you read this, Balki, the creative czar of Lowe, would have done the Annual Ad Review for the AdClub Bombay at the Nehru Centre. The Ad Review has always been one of the highlights of the Ad Club's calendar of events. Old-timers tell me that it was at one such review that Mohammed Khan irreverently called Mudra's Krishnamurthy "invisible." Mudra's spin doctors decided that it was not enough that 700 people had heard this. They engineered press publicity that ensured that lakhs of readers were told that Khan thought that Krishnamurty was invisible. It is quite a different matter that most of the readers did not know who Khan was. It was equally irrelevant that almost all of them did not know who Krishnamurthy was. Now they all knew there was one "invisible" man called A. G. Krishnamurthy in an agency called Mudra.

The Ad Review was always made by creative people. Yes, the advertising industry considers Ishan Raina and Goutam Rakshit as creative people. Then one is told that Pradeep Guha as President of the Ad Club brought clients like Sunil Alagh to make the Ad Review, that too at the Oberoi, with wine and cheese thrown in. Now, it's back to the creative people, and back to the Nehru Centre with batata wada and cutting chai. Quo Vadis Ad Club Bombay?

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