They are billed as the Oscars for the creative advertising fraternity. But last year, the Advertising Club’s Abby Awards were hit by charges of plagiarism, scam ads (work created only for awards) and a boycott from key agencies. And now, the Abby sees some competition from D&AD (what was until 2011 called the British Design and Art Direction) Awards are set to enter India backing the Kyoorius Awards.

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Kyoorius, a not-for-profit initiative by Mumbai-headquartered Transasia Fine Papers, has been organising the Kyoorius Designyatra, a design conclave since 2006. Last year, it revived the design awards with a D&AD-supervised jury process. The alliance between Kyoorius and D&AD extends to the Advertising Awards that are scheduled to be held in late May 2014. The Call for Entry will start on March 20.

Said Tim Lindsay, CEO of D&AD: “We are delighted to be partnering Kyoorius for the advertising awards. What we bring forth is integrity and quality of the judging process and the jurors.  Both organisations are neutral, and the awards will be decided entirely on merit against the three D&AD criteria: Is it a great idea? Is it beautifully executed? Is it relevant to its context?”

Asked how D&AD Awards are from the various others internationally, Lindsay said all the money earned from the awards is ploughed back to serve the fraternity.  And the same would hold true for India, he said. Echoing this view, Laura Jordan Bambach, President of D&AD, added: “D&AD desires to and has an obligation to support the Indian creative community, to stimulate excellence, and to start a New Blood programme for young Indian creative people.” According to Rajesh Kejriwal, founder and CEO, Kyoorius, the jury will comprise 18 members and it will be 60:40 in favour of international creative gurus (See Box). “The number of judges may increase if the number of entries grows,” he said.

Meanwhile, a meeting was held earlier this week on Goafest and the Abby Awards and a date is being firmed up for the event.  On the participation at the creative awards, while leading agency Lowe Lintas & Partners has not been sending entries for the Abby for some years now, last year saw even Ogilvy & Mather, one of the country’s most awarded ad agency, boycotting the show. “We felt that they were not energising our people as they used to earlier,” national creative director Abhijit Avasthi had said then. When this correspondent spoke to Avasthi on whether his agency had taken a decision on participating in the 2014 edition of Abby, he said matter-of-factly: “No, not as of now. However, if they accept our conditions and change their stand, we may consider.” When asked if Ogilvy will participate at the Kyoorius Awards, Avasthi said: “We’ll want to hear a little more. I don’t know much about it.” According to Kejriwal, the response from the creative fraternity to the announcement has been stupendous. They are familiar with the D&AD standards, he said. —By arrangement with MxMIndia.com