The Best of 07'

Long before, even when I had nothing to do with advertising as a profession and passion, I have been awed by the creative spell that this idea business blankets on the audience and herds them into and out of the market place......

I have been subject to many a questions in the last ten years even since I have had something to do with advertising, as my bread and butter, for the soul and the body, as to why is it that ad makers and advertisers are seen as 'not for the conscious but for the unconscious mind, who is subject to the hypnotic spell' ......

I have been accused by many as being part of a dirty tribe who is parasitic and does nothing but feeds on the organisms of noncommercial culture - the culture's past and present, ideology and myths, politics and customs, art and architecture, literature and music, and even its religions . . . . For example, women are commodified to sell everything from cars to colognes . . . . Advertising thus pimps its products.......

Strong words indeed but let us have critics galore, they always had been and are going to be.. but the fact is simple....contrary to what self-appointed protectors of the consumer so loudly proclaim, advertising does not cause people to buy bad products. Nothing will put a bad product out of business faster than a good advertising campaign. Advertising causes people to try a product once, but poor quality eliminates any possibility of a repeat purpose and that is true and time tested.....
The year 2007 was unique for Indian advertising business....

Agencies didnt hide their urge to merge and many became one.. consolidation is finally happening... Bates and its cousin, David for instance making it Bates David enterprise... Second agencies ,atleast in India, were finally told that they werent meant to be just cute cousins of the main agency and will have to survive or merge....

Digital acquisitions galore and as usual people played the typical ad like musical chair...the top creative faces hip hopped last year like grass hoppers... some even came back to where they left to leave again.....(well ! the year to last wasnt better either..) No one lasted in his seat for too long. Grey Worldwide, Publicis Ambience, McCann-Erickson and Rediffusion DY&R lost some of its senior people, while O&M remained almost unperturbed, and Lowe washed its dirty linen in public....

Ownerships seem changing with Saatchi&Saatchi bought 20% stake from its Indian holders while, IPG went all out getting the remaining 51% of Lintas ( for a huge 100 Million dollars) and 40% of FCB and many more...and fewer awards came in with the hit rate at Cannes dropping to just 1.2 % ( creative arrogance or is it the dearth of talents?)....

Media equations are changing with the world cup coming in as a cropper, and all the moneys committed hoping against hope that the men in blue will perform, and when they failed to, the admakers, media planners, media houses and buyers went sulky and with explantions, more than the team and its managers and advertisers decided ( well!!) to stay away from cricket, and treat it like a pariah....Radio, making a come back,,,, FM growing at 20% and mobile at 40 % .... and lots more...

Bekar ads were churned out making the industry look stupid, dumb and senseless about the clients money, creatives talked to themselves or the competetors creatives (using the clients money of course) and not to the buyer, formulae and cliche shamelessly lay exposed, the industry so very audaciously indulged in self pat , and bestowed awards on itself with a comical grace that is very own to us and us only.... but good ads kept coming and they stole hearts... many to say and many to write literature about but my pick from the whole 365 days that bypassed us would be the ones which Ogilvy & Mather made for Vodafone..

Ogilvy had become a makeover specialist with Axis bank, Vodafone and the latest Canara bank ads... Vodafone stole my heart inspite of their fading out the pug, for the simple and yet stupendous creatives that they made for the Vodafone brand and its allied services like alerts et al....There are many others, but here we go.. what we feel as the best of 07.....


and now this....



and this..its getting better....