The Hindu Business Line : Nobody grows old in advertising

To promote, improve, develop and further the science and art of advertising in all its branches, and to provide facilities for and to promote, foster and maintain social intercourse amongst members and other persons interested in advertising...”

Thus begins the first objective of The Advertising Club, Madras, constituted in February 1956. Only in January that year, the Madras Regional Committee of the Advertising Agencies Association of India had decided to form the club, “to provide a common forum for the advertising agency profession, advertising managers of newspapers, and publicity officers of firms to meet together once in a month.”

Chronicling the fifty years of the non-profit society is a commemoration volume titled Nobody grows old in Advertising, compiled by R.V. Rajan and S. Krishna, over 18 months. One of the first problems the duo had to encounter was th e absence of any records at the club secretariat for the period before 1994. “The first ray of hope came when V.S. Padmanabhan sent us a bulletin of Ad Club Kolkata,” recounts Rajan. The February 1957 bulletin had talked about the inaugural function of the club, and provided “a documentary proof of the inauguration date – until then it was all guess work!”

The image of Madras in the early 1960s was one of “unsuccessful coffee shops and gossip centres,” as S.R. Ayer, former MD of Ogilvy & Mather, reminisces in one of the articles included in the volume. That was when he was sent to Madras. Ayer remembers how his colleagues in Bombay felt very sorry for him. “They were of the view that ‘The Outpost’ (that’s how they referred to Madras then) would set my career back by five years…” Given the environment in Madras then, R.K. Swamy, the club’s president, decided to bring in ‘outstanding professionals’ from outside the city to address tea meetings at the club, so as to “bridge the gap caused by the lack of a professional trade magazine… and the media’s apathy to the advertising business as a whole.” The earliest seminar at the club, in 1964, was on the theme: ‘Advertising vital to a dynamic economy’. A ‘conference’ in 1966, ‘the first ever advertising convention in South India on advertising’, was on ‘Challenges of self reliance in industry’. Fast-forward to the present, and what you have are ‘Future shocks’!

“In the early 90s, the names of Fountainhead and Insight used to feature in the list of awardees,” notes an essay on awards. “Today it is the turn of Rubecon and One Point Size - both creative boutiques, who have been stealing the show from the multinational agencies.”

Deadline, another platform for showcasing creativity, demands results “within 36 hours from the time of getting a brief.” Standards are rigorous and propositions, unimaginable, one learns. For instance, in 1995, the topic was “action plan for a new toothpaste in a situation where there is a ban on advertising toothpastes of all kinds.” Over the years, the contestants had to “market India to prospective investor when everything is in chaos,” draw up “a 7-year curriculum on specialised subjects for a school for wizardry and witchcraft,” apart from presenting pitches on social issues too.

The advertising industry has come “a long way from line drawings, artworks, blocks, matrix, stereo and bromides to zip drive, CD and email transmission,” writes V. Kalidas in a retrospective. An easy read of once-upon-a-time ad tales.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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