The Hindu Business Line : The Abby from AAAI

Santa lost some weight, besides his voice, trimmed his beard into a goatee, dressed down like Madhukar Kamath and gave the industry an award in time for Christmas.

The biggest news breaking out of Mumbai is that the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Advertising Club Bombay will be presenting a joint creative award at the Goafest in the first week of April 2008 in sunny Goa. And this is no April Fool’s joke.

The award will be called the Abby.

Thank God that Goafest name that the AAAI gave its award has been buried. There will be no tears shed for its departure.

Smoking the peace pipe

Madhukar Kamath, President, AAAI

This momentous decision comes after about three acrimonious years when the AAAI was seen as quietly telling its members to boycott the Abby awards. And the Abby awards were seen as a one-horse race with O&M and its men in black cantering away with all the awards at what was slowly becoming a lacklustre awards show.

On the other hand, the Goafest was without O&M and Lowe (because Balki decided not to enter in either award) and was seen as becoming a Prasoon Joshi show.

Well, all that could now be history. Madhukar Kamath, President, AAAI, along with Colvyn Harris of JWT, Jagdeep Bakshi of Contract and Shantakumar of Saatchi met with Bhaskar Das, President, AdClub Bombay, who was accompanied by Shashi Sinha of Lodestar, Subhash Kamath of Bates and Pratap Bose of O&M.

The meeting was held in the lofty heights of the ITC Grand Central in Parel, Mumbai. Ironically, the meeting room was called “Point of View”.

Branding issues

While the mood and tone at the meeting was really cordial, a far cry from a meeting two years ago when an AAAI member asked an AdClub office bearer to “get out”, there are some issues that need to be resolved. Most important is the branding of the event. Some AdClub office bearers see the entire branding being hijacked by the AAAI.

The AAAI members feel that since the award is called the Abby, which is synonymous with the AdClub Bombay, there should not be any branding issue at all.

Another contentious issue is that of the media award that is presented by the AAAI. The proposal is to call it the Abby media award.

This seems to be causing some angst in the AdClub, because the AdClub has a hugely popular property called the Emvie awards for media. If there is an Abby for media, an Emvie might become irrelevant.

Looks like Shashi Sinha and Sam Balsara will have to sort that one out. And then could there be a joint effectiveness award too?

Era of Consolidation

Madhukar Kamath seems to be in a mood to sign accords all around.

He has successfully brought the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) back to the table and if observers are to be believed, he is aiming to heal the wounds and get the joint IBF/AAAI Committee humming again.

As if this was not enough he is poised to set up a joint committee between AAAI and the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA).

This would be a resurgence of sorts. Old-timers recall the existence of such a committee that lay dormant and suddenly sprung into sight to tackle an emergency if one arose.

An ongoing dialogue between the agencies and the advertisers can only be good news for all concerned. Madhukar Kamath, take a bow.

Gender sensitivity awards

Bobby Sista

The second Laadli awards for gender sensitivity in advertising and media were presented in Mumbai.

While the function was apparently better received than the last event, it seems the jury had a tough time selecting winners in the advertising section.

This is a clear sign that the advertising industry needs to be more gender-sensitive. Bobby Sista can feel he has done a good job once more.

Mohammed Khan retires

Another leading light of the advertising industry has decided to call it a day. Readers of this column would remember we had alluded to this after the appointment of Sonal Dabral as Chairman of Bates. Mohammed will be remembered for a rather tempestuous career marked by some superb copy writing and some amazingly crafted advertising.

He loved to flirt with controversy and that made him a darling of the media. You could be sure to get some “good” comment from Mohammed.

He has won every award there is to win and judged most of them as well. From Charms to the Times of India, he created some memorable advertising.

Wonder what he will be up to now. We are sure it will be something interesting. We’ll let you know soon.

Victoria

Comments may be sent to brandline@thehindu.co.in

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