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Ramesh Narayan

FOR hundreds of years, I am told, the Brahmins claimed sole rights over Sanskrit and therefore ruled over the religious side of society.

Societal change marginalised the language itself. Even straitjacketed South Indian temples offer worship to their Gods in Tamil, and Sanskrit has been struggling to be accepted as a living language.

The creative mandarins of advertising agencies have long held that creativity is their exclusive domain. Therefore, anyone in a suit, or even wearing a necktie should sit quietly, nursing his command over marketing strategy and not dare enter the hallowed portals of creativity.

Corporate change made it such that creativity is being demanded in every facet of life, whether it be designing a logo or changing a toilet roll.

Clients have long wielded the big stick of authority and "interfered" in creative pursuits. A mature client who realises that consumer insights are important could actually add value to the creative development of an idea. This could best be served at the stage of the brief.

The not-so mature clients give incomplete briefs and wait to see some creative output, using that as a springboard to get the sagging right side of their brain to feebly start dissecting that idea.

Most Government babus think not about the consumer but about how some Secretary or Minister would react to the message. The death of creativity can be witnessed daily in Government advertising. Yet the babus actually think they are all-knowing, and the consumer is non-existent.

Competition will take care of companies that run on these lines.

Yet the debate rages: what is creativity in advertising? The Ad Review hosted by the Advertising Club last week had Balakrishnan (Balki) of Lowe attempting to answer that. The sum and substance of what he said to an attentive audience of over 500 creative people was that an advertisement needs to be interesting.

I am sure that is one rather good way of defining creative advertising. If advertising is interesting, it attracts attention and communicates well.

I do not wish to over-simplify what Balki said. Nor do I dispute it. There would be as many interpretations of creativity as there are creative people.

Yet he also said that the awards in the advertising business ended up judging creativity, not advertising. He went on to say that scam advertising should be permissible because the organisers of awards made the ridiculous prerequisite that the `Campaign of the Year' should have pieces of work from print, electronic and outdoor media, or some such thing. He was squarely placing the reason for scam advertising at the gates of those who organise awards.

Well, he had the floor. Now, I can have my say. Firstly, I am glad the President of the Advertising Club Bombay stood up right there and said that the `Campaign of the Year' for the Abby awards, which are arguably the most coveted awards in India, does not need work across media. Having got that out of the way, I wonder what new excuse creative types need to keep churning out scam advertising.

Let's get this straight once and for all. Advertising awards like the Abby and the Triple A are supposed to judge creativity in Advertising. The operative words are "in advertising." Whether you like it or not, there cannot be any argument about what advertising is. In case it needs reiteration, it is paid communication.

Now this is where the grey area should get wiped out completely. Advertising goes through the rigour of a brief, a strategy and a creative interpretation of that strategy. It is also something that is supposed to be thought through with a set of objectives to achieve. A set of objectives that normally pertains to the market, and the consumers therein. It also goes through the hands of a client. What appears in print or on the TV is something that has gone through these trials by fire, so to say.

A scam advertisement is something no client asked for, and probably did not pay for. It was created in the fertile `mind-field' of a glory-hunting creative person. It was placed in the media for only one reason. To qualify as an entry for an award. The objectives were personal glory. It had nothing to do with markets and consumers.

It is just not fair to allow such an entry to compete along with a regular advertisement. Either you create categories like "unpublished work" and the like or you create a new set of awards for creativity. Just creativity. Not creativity in advertising.

I respect Balki. I admire his work. I like him as a person. I think he is genuine. That is why I despair at him going off like a loose cannon before an adoring crowd of young people. Young people who will lap up what he says and model themselves not on what he does, but on what he says.

The advertising industry moans about not being taken seriously. Various management consultants have stepped into what could easily have been the domain of the advertising agency.

It is important that the industry rises above personal glory and thinks about common good. At the end of the day, I believe that even creativity has to bow before integrity. And then, just as you cannot be "slightly" pregnant, you cannot be "slightly" honest. And a few honest men like Balki should be saying it as it is.

(The author heads Canco Advertising.)

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