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Ranjan Kapur

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) used to have an annual award called the AAAI Premnarayan Award, which was conferred on an individual as a kind of a lifetime achievement honour. Most of the big guns have received this honour and old-timers say the last person to be honoured was Goutam Rakshit a couple of years ago.

Then something happened and this award went underground. We don’t know whether it was because the industry was not able to find someone befitting of this honour, or it was just to revamp, refresh and rejuvenate the award. Whatever be the reason, we are glad it’s back in its new improved version. The name is now just the AAAI award. Reference to Premnarayan has been dropped, we note. We do not know the reason, but we are sure the committee that decided on this new name in its wisdom knew what it was doing.

Well, we are pleased to note that this new improved award will be presented to Ranjan Kapur. As everyone knows, Kapur headed O&M after the inimitable Mani Iyer passed the baton to him. We were rather tickled to read a press release that quoted President of AAAI Madhukar Kamath as saying that Kapur nurtured and encouraged Piyush Pandey. We are not sure whether Kapur would be very flattered that the media chose to highlight that single point as the most important thing he did.

Anyway, the AAAI needs to be complimented on its magnanimity. We are told that Kapur, who was on the managing committee of the AAAI several years ago, was upset with the association, never consented to be on its committees, and never even let O&M enter the creative Triple A awards. Well, Ranjan has retired from O&M, the AAAI has buried its Triple A award and we are glad that everyone has forgotten the past and kissed and made up. We hope we are invited for the event. We love mushy reunions.

It’s that time of the year when the industry elects the leaders who will guide the fortunes of its many associations in the year to come. Kamath has been given a second innings at AAAI and will also be chairman, Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) if our informers have it right. That leaves the Ad Club Bombay and the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA). A little bird tells us that Bhaskar Das could have another innings as president of the AdClub Bombay and that Pradeep Guha will be laying down the mantle as president, IAA. Raj Nayak who is currently vice president there, would probably be crowned President. Now, obviously these are all rumours. We have to wait for the elections early next month, but a little harmless crystal ball gazing never hurt anyone. And of course, we love being the first to tell you things. If anyone bothered to institute an award for scoops in the advertising industry, no guesses for who would be the winner.

Nano: A matter of positioning

Ratan Tata is reported to have said that the Nano would not be sold as a taxi as its brand image would suffer. Now, I am not sure whether Anand Mahindra would take umbrage at that statement. After all, almost all the taxis plying out of the new international Bengaluru airport are Logans. Incidentally, we read a news item that Mega Cabs, a new entrant into the taxi business in Mumbai would be having an all Indigo Marina fleet. So now we know the positioning of the Indigo at least. Mr Tata, we are sure, forgot that a large number of metered taxis in Europe are Mercedes Benz cars. Makes us wonder what the Nano is being positioned as. A super-exclusive Rs 100,000 car?

The advertising industry prides itself on its power to innovate. First it popularised Hinglish, a combination of English and Hindi (eg: Youngistan). The idea really took off because it was in reality a reflection of how the average Mumbaikar or Delhiite spoke. The informal spoken English was always liberally laced with the vernacular. Now they have entered an all new league — “wrong English”. Purists of the language were still shuddering after adidas said “impossible is nothing”. They are now swearing that we are seeing the end of English as they knew it with the highly publicised “Next is what?” from Samsung. What happened to grammar anyway? We wonder if it’s actually a literal translation of the phrase from Korean to English. No agency would dare question what comes from an overseas office anyway.

The Vodaphone commercial for conference calls is an absolute blast. The young men advising a friend how to knot a tie held us in rapt attention and the chap who just keeps laughing hysterically had us in splits. Way to go, guys!

_ Victoria

More Stories on : Advertising | Mumbai Mosaic | Awards & Honours | Cars

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