The Hindu Business Line : The Abby Nite

Without doubt, the Abby is the most coveted award for creative excellence in advertising in India. And Abby Nite is the biggest advertising event in India, after AdAsia. But then, Abby Nite comes every year, and the AdAsia came after 20 or 21 years. A quick look at the Abby Nite:

The winners

They talk about a whitewash. What about a "blackwash"? Yes, it was O&M all over again. Piyush Pandey and his people in black (all O&M staffers come for awards functions dressed only in black) cantered away with the prestigious "creative agency of the year" award. Makes one wonder about the creative supremacy this agency has exhibited over the last six years. Hats off to O&M and its clients. Especially Fevicol, Hutch and Perfetti, who have had the vision and guts to go for the big idea and endure with a winning thought.

Everest and Rediffusion were the other winners, albeit distant ones. It was interesting seeing the creative director of Everest with a black scarf, displaying an image of skull-and-bones, on his head. These creative chaps know how to stand out in a crowd. Since ponytails are passé, interesting headgear seems to be in. Prahlad Kakkar, who traditionally wears a Stetson over his flowing locks, was one of the "senior" people honoured by AdClub Bombay. He decided to eschew his Stetson for the evening and let his hair hang loose.

In typical Prahlad style, he humorously began by saying this honour was a conspiracy to make him retire. He emphatically stated he would not. Thank God for that. What would the mad ad world be without brilliant mad hatters (sorry for the pun) like Prahlad?

The function

The card exhorted us to be in our seats by 6 p.m. The show, it said, would start at 6.30 p.m. It took off at 7.15 p.m. Being the Golden Jubilee of AdClub Bombay, the Abby function had a long-winded retro review of the past 50 years with lots of song and dance. Too much song and dance was the verdict. And not much retrofit with advertising. Sure the eye candy was there with young girls in little leather hot pants, but guys grow up. If we wanted that, we would go to the Gladrags show, not Abby.

And what happened to all those big names we always associated with this show? People still remember the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Hassan, Arun Shourie, Kapil Dev, Aishwarya Rai, Amir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, and, equally important, every single industry bigwig, whether agency head, advertiser, media boss or industry leader on the Abby stage presenting the coveted awards.

This time the advertising industry was represented by Mike Khanna and Bal Palekar (Chairman, Awards Judging Committee). The glamour quotient was represented by Miss India, Earth (yes, you got it right, Earth), Diya Mirza, Celina Jaitley, John Abraham and Fardeen Khan.

Guys, you really don't have to have Bollywood present, you know.

Missing

In the golden jubilee year one expected the show to be dripping with nostalgia and golden moments. Sorry, they weren't there. We expected the sponsor Kunal Dasgupta of Sony to be there, as he always is. He was absent. We expected entertainment from the likes of Adnan Sami (he was there a couple of years ago). Sorry again. We expected, yes, we definitely expected the prestigious big awards to be presented by the chief guest and the president of AdClub Bombay (it has always been that way). Mr Parameswaran, you are modest and self-effacing, but you are the president. And one would rather receive the big Abby from the President of the AdClub than from a film star. And where was the Abby statuette on stage? One has gotten used to seeing it revolving, rotating or just standing still there. This time one only saw the logo of the Club.

Finally

The stage looked grand. The audio system sounded great. The flow of events was pretty slick. Mr President and the awards committee members, congratulations!

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