Small agencies make their mark at ABBY awards

Remember the ad for Standard Chartered's Manhattan credit card that showed a baby deciding to call himself 'Dinku' even as people around him are contemplating a moniker for him?

Created by Orchard Advertising, the advertisement won the Silver ABBY in the financial advertising category at the 38th year of the award.

ABBY, the awards for creative excellence in advertising instituted by The Advertising Club of Bombay, saw small agencies making their presence felt.

Apurva Purohit, COO Times Television Network and Proctor-ABBY Awards judging committee said, "It is heartening to see a diverse mix of agencies picking up awards apart from the expected winners."

Apart from Orchard Advertising, agencies such as Alok Nanda Communications and M/S Shop won silver ABBYs for their clients BS Motoring (print) and Momies-Bait (TV), respectively. On the occasion of 50 years of the Advertising Club of Bombay, a musical was designed that took the viewers down the memory lane of advertising.

Spiced with ad jingles, the Bollywood inspired musical gave glimpses of the idealism of the 50s and 60s to the hippy culture of the 70s and the romance of the 80s and 90s.

The club honoured Panna Jain, veteran art director with a special memento. Jain advised the young creative bunch to keep raising the bar of advertising.

Prahalad Kakkar, ad film maker and founder of Genesis Public Relations, declared that he was decades away from retiring and had a toilet paper roll that contained a list of people he had to express gratitude.

For the first time, ABBY awards also included work from the South Asian neighbours. Phoenix Ogilvy from Sril Lanka bagged six ABBYs while JWT Pakistan bagged one for their respective regions.

Irwan Weerachody, chairman of the Sri Lankan Phoenix Ogilvy said, "This is the first time that Sri Lankan advertising has been recognised in the SAARC region and is also a reflection of the growing interest in Sri Lankan advertising that is now beginning to compete with the best in the world."

For a fourth time in a row, Ogilvy & Mather walked away with the creative agency of the year with 26 ABBYs in all. Piyush Pandey attributed this success to their diverse work done by the agency during last year from their existing clients Fevicol and Hutch to Asian Paints and ADD Pens.

But this year the victory was sweeter for the agency according to O&M's officials as there was fierce competition in some categories.

Agencies like Everest, Rediffusion DY&R, McKann Erickson, Ambience Publicis and Enterprise Nexus gave a tough fight to the winner by winning more than five ABBYs this year. Everest especially picked up a couple of ABBYs for its Tortoise mosquito coil ads.

The ABBY awards this year can be summed up best in Leo Burnett, the American advertising legend's quote, " When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either." Many in the ad world would agree to that.