The Hindu Business Line : IAA bats with TERI

The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) has suddenly woken up and burst upon the advertising scene with a cracker of an idea. They are partnering TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute, run by Dr R. K. Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, winner of the Nobel Prize and mega flavour of the day) to kick-start a programme called Light a Billion Lives.

In short, the IAA hopes to run a national contest, attract the best communications campaign and then impress upon the media to run that campaign. The objective is to raise money that would go to install solar lanterns in some of the 75 million households in rural India that have absolutely no access to electricity. TERI and its NGO partners will handle the money, installation of solar panels, distribution of solar lanterns and so on, and IAA would create the awareness and hopefully turn on the switch that would bring in the money to Light a Billion Lives.

We are impressed!

This will be the first time the advertising industry as a whole does a concrete public service campaign. The one-off artworks for NGOs that appear on one solitary hoarding and win Cannes Lions don’t count for us.

If they pull this off, we will take back all the naughty things we keep saying about this industry we love so much.

The effort was announced at a function at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai a few days ago. President of the IAA Pradeep Guha held up a solar lantern on stage and seemed pleased as punch. We would be too, if we were on the verge of something so big and good. Senior members of the IAA tell us we can expect the call for entry forms very soon. We’ll track the progress (or otherwise) of this effort for you.

Ambi and Daniella

The IAA function we spoke about was actually positioned as some kind of Summit. We’ve heard of exaggerations, but having one billed speaker and calling an event a summit really takes the cake.

The audience, which had come to listen to Daniella Kraustchak (apparently the guru of unconventional media), got “two for the price of one”. M. G. Parameswaran of Draft FCB Ulka (everyone calls him Ambi, we don’t know why) looking very dapper and somehow very much younger than what we remember, made a compact presentation on OOH advertising (Out Of Home). He summed up things rather pithily by saying the medium had an OOH!, an AAH! and an OUCH!

Frankly, having said that, we were satisfied and ready to dine and go home. Yet, the main speaker was still to come on.

Daniella, apparently, made a version of the presentation she was to make here, at Cannes earlier this year. That explained the absence of all the top creative guys at the event. The organisers politely blamed the rain (it poured kittens and puppies that day) but we don’t think we could have seen that presentation twice in three months.

Don’t get us wrong, it was pretty interesting, but we believe speakers (creative or otherwise) should stop showing show reels of collected works masquerading as presentations. Maybe Daniella should sit down with Ambi for a few tips on a thought-provoking presentation.

Golden boy Bindra

Abhinav Bindra: The picture of ‘cool’Let there be light!

We can already hear the brains of the creative guys cranking up to deliver TV commercials for a plethora of products and services that will “hit the bull’s eye” with the golden boy of Indian sport Bindra as the model. We think any product that wants to portray itself as ‘cool’ or even ‘cold’ could happily use Bindra. We never saw anyone quite as unconcerned at all the fuss that the media, friends and in fact all of India seemed to be making. To him, it seems like just another day at the firing range. Way to go, Bindra! But remember, we Indians are an emotional lot and we have won an individual Olympic gold after decades of waiting and praying, so forgive us when we dance in the streets with excitement.

Jet needs Altitude

Jet Airways has always been a class act. Its advertising was handled first by Lintas, then Network, then Saatchi and now we hear that the IPG group has designated a group called Altitude to take care of Jet’s growing international ambitions. If an airline needs a firm called Altitude, what will a realty company need? An agency called Space? Or will the Railways opt for an agency called Locomotion? The mind is boggled by the possibilities. Maybe Ray+Keshavan should get into the business of micro-branding divisions of agencies.

Olympic fever

Coke has announced that it will run the Chinese tagline on all cans anywhere in the world for a limited period as a tribute to the Olympics. I can’t wait to raise my can with the Chinese legend on it. Prasoon Joshi had better get started with an Aamir film in Chinese. Anything Chinese seems to sell these days. _ Victoria