The Hindu Business Line : Of awards, cheers and high drama!

The golden arms of the Abby statuette stretching heavenwards underwent transformation this year. It will now have laser rays to go with it, said Madhukar Kamath, President, AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India), at the grand finale night o f Abby Awards 2008.

The suspense and speculation of many days finally ended when the Grand Prix awardees were announced amid giddy celebrations. Leo Burnett, JWT, Mudra Communications and Nirvana Films bagged the coveted Abby Grand Prix awards. Leo Burnett’s Luxor highlighters campaign with the sketch of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara was among the most popular, if the audience cheers were anything to go by. It bagged the Grand Prix in the Print and Outdoor Media categories.

Another audience favourite was JWT’s ‘Lead India’ campaign for the Times of India which won the Integrated Grand Prix and the Nike cricket commercial, which won the Film Grand Prix.

Mudra’s radio ad jingle for Cycle Agarbattis had the audience in splits as the team from the agency accepted the Radio Grand Prix award. The Gas ad for Neo Sports kept the audience on tenterhooks with nervewracking suspense. Nirvana won the Grand Prix for this ad in the Filmcraft category.

Ogilvy & Mather was conspicuous by its absence from the list of the Grand Prix awards. The decade-long stronghold of the agency over the awards was broken, but not before it went home with the maximum number of Abbys this year. The agency bagged 58 Abbys including five Gold. The other winners were Contract, Tribal DDB and Rediffusion DYR, which walked away with one gold Abby each, while Mudra and Saatchi and Saatchi bagged two goldseach.

While Burnett won 37 awards including the two Grand Prix and three gold, JWT ended up with 30 Abbys, including the two Grand Prix awards and five gold.

The Ad Club of Bombay and AAAI, hosts for the three-day festival, were more than happy with the proceedings of the festival. As Bhaskar Das (President of Ad Club of Bombay) and Madhukar Kamath of AAAI kicked off the awards night, they made it clear that the advertising community had no bones to chew. The AdAsia event to be hosted by India in 2011 will further celebrate this communion, Das said.

The young professionals were ecstatic after their win at the Abbys – this was the perfect way to end the three days of fun and frolic in the sand. One of the winners, 23-year-old Aritra Choudhuri, said, “When I went up on stage and collected the trophy with my team, I felt a rush of blood. It was exhilarating as well as gratifying, because it proved that it was a job well done. Recognition of this sort does help, awards are great motivators.”

When one of his great motivators, Josy Paul, head of BBDO, walked up on stage to give away the awards and reiterated the importance of radio as the medium of the future, Aritra, along with his peers across agencies, cheered him.

The drama at Goafest 2008 was omnipresent, with an extremely participative audience. When someone in the audience shouted boo to Josy’s radio pitch, he immediately gave it back with a dramatic ‘Boo to you!’

The GoaFest is a totally creative space where youngsters get a chance to network with the best in the industry, said Arvind Sharma, Chairman, Leo Burnett. “In the afternoon, I saw an international speaker chatting with a young ad professional over lunch, exchanging ideas. Suddenly the young man realised that this person was the famous so and so and was taken aback at the frankness and ease with which they were talking. Now, I think that’s where the success of the festival lies.”

“I think every finalist is a winner tonight. If the world sees only a single winner, I will be disappointed. The idea of holding the festival every year since its inception was to encourage creativity and celebrate winners, who are too many.”

This spirit was clearly reflected in the behaviour of the audience which cheered for an award well deserved, regardless of its being from a rival agency.

The ad community, well known for its creative funkiness, outdid itself in the noise it made. Raucous voices, noises from cymbals, trumpets and sky rockets, it was all there! The party went on till two in the morning, much after the awards ceremony.

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