The Advertising Agencies Association of India today announced that this year’s AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award will be conferred upon Krishan Premnarayen, Senior Partner, Prem Associates Advertising and Marketing. This is the highest honour to be given to an individual in India for his/her outstanding contribution to the Advertising Industry.
Premnarayen was the youngest President of AAAI when he took charge as President in 1988 at the age of 36 years.
Making the announcement, Ashish Bhasin, President, AAAI, said: “Krishan Premnarayen, besides being the youngest ever President, made very significant contributions to the industry. It was during his tenure that the foundation was laid to make AAAI the legitimately recognized body for our industry across constituencies. He must also be given due credit for vastly strengthening AAAI’s relationships with the media industry – including while he was at the helm of ABC and NRSC. He is truly deserving of this honour”
Added Nakul Chopra, Chairman of the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award Selection Committee: “It gives me immense pleasure that this year’s Committee unanimously decided to confer this richly deserved honour on Krishan. His manifold contributions to the industry have played an important role in helping strengthen both our industry and our Association over many years. Even after he was no longer directly active with AAAI he continued to go out of his way to help, whenever called upon for an industry cause. It is somewhat fitting that he is being conferred an award, the inception of which, dates back to his own tenure as President AAAI. He richly deserves this award, my heartiest congratulations to him.”
The Standing Committee on Advertising (STACA), at a meeting of their Board of Trustees inducted senior adperson Jaideep Gandhi, Founder of Another Idea, onto their Board of Trustees. STACA is the apex body whose operations arm is the Advertising Council of India (ACI).
Jaideep Gandhi
Said Pradeep Guha, Chairman of STACA: “Jaideep Gandhi has been a veteran advertising person associated with prestigious industry Associations such as the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) for many years. His understanding of industry matters will be an asset to STACA and ACI, under whose aegis the AdAsia has been held in India. ACI also sponsors six young professionals every year to the prestigious FastTrack program in Malaysia.”
STACA was set up in 1981 as a Public Charitable Trust. Its main object is to impart education in advertising, marketing and allied subjects. Besides, the Trust organises various activities to promote growth & development of advertising and marketing and to promote better understanding amongst all the constituents in the field of advertising.
Everyone has been witnessing with growing alarm the spread of the coronavirus across the globe and in India. Our Country has been on a lockdown for a few weeks now and Governments, both Central and the States, have taken many effective steps to reduce the impact of this pandemic.
But all this is coming at a huge economic cost. The Advertising Agency business, like many other businesses have been seriously affected. The bulk of the agency’s costs are fixed in nature, be it Salaries, Rent, Electricity, Communication, Upkeep, Media Audience measurement reports, etc. The income and cash flow has been in serious stress in the last month and unless there is some intervention, many businesses will either file for bankruptcy or will have to undersize considerably.
Ashish Bhasin
While the Indian Newspapers Society and Indian Broadcasting Federation, the media associations representing the interest of print and television edia respectively, have permitted AAAI members to pay monies they have collected from their clients and not insist on what is due to them on the due dates, the continuity of the agency business cannot be for long without the help of the Government of India, note a commuique from the Advertising Agencies Association of India. In this regard, Ashish Bhasin, President of AAAI, has sent a detailed set of recommendations on behalf of the members of AAAI to the Union Minister of Information & Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar. In this he has stressed the importance of advertising industry for the accelerated revival of the economy.
“What we have asked the Government is very reasonable. We want principally money that is owed to us by way of IT & GST refunds, and dues from Government and PSUs for our advertising bills to be settled immediately. We have also said that any payment made to us should not suffer any TDS deduction going forward, since there is unlikely to be any significant profit for the year. Further we have sought a direction to banks and our debtors that they provide the much needed cashflow to pay salaries and meet other essential expenses, etc,” said Bhasin, adding: “These do not lead to any revenue loss to the Government. They just need to show a kind heart. The timely help they will provide actually is the help they are providing to the people of India, since advertising is a critical input that can provide a ripple effect in reviving many sectors of the economy.”
One other recommendation made is to treat advertising expenses as an investment and have this cost amortised over the next three years. AAAI believes this will encourage larger advertising outlay which will help revive the economy faster. In the same vein, AAAI also suggested that advertising expenses could be given weighted deduction while computing taxes. The suggestion was that every Rs 100 spent on advertising, should be treated as Rs 200, while computing the taxable income.
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and The Advertising Club have announced that both Goafest and Abby Awards 2020 will be deferred for the year. This comes in the face of the prevailing global and national crisis.
Notes a communique: “The Abby Awards saw some of the greatest works being submitted this year and inspite of a muted economic scenario and a global health pandemic the number of entries were at almost at par to that of last year. Such large participation numbers for the Abby awards are a testament to its covetous stature in the industry.”
The Advertising Club and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) announced the names of the jury for ‘The Red Abby’ award which will be presented as a part of Goafest 2020. ‘The Red Abby’ awards have been instituted to acknowledge the best creative works that address the issue of violence against women in society.
The jury for the Red Abby Awards include some of the foremost leaders from across the FMCG, advertising, media, creative and entertainment industry.
The jury list for ‘The Red Abby’ 2020 (in alphabetical order)
1. Anupriya Acharya- CEO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia
2. Babita Baruah, Managing Partner, GTB India
3. Deepika Warrier, CEO, Nourishco Beverages (a joint venture between Pepsico and Tata Global Beverages)
4. Lara Balsara Wajifdar, Executive Director at Madison World
5. Megha Tata, MD- South Asia, Discovery Communications India
6. Mini Mathur, Acclaimed Actor and Television Host
7. Raj Nayak, Founder, House of Cheer
8. Tarun Katial, CEO, Zee5, India
The jury meet is scheduled for March 17 in Mumbai where the jurors will test creativity and impact of the communication campaigns.
Speaking about the judging process, Partho Dasgupta, President- The Advertising Club President said: “Women’s safety is a cause that needs a loud and clear voice. The esteemed jury of ‘The Red Abby’ comes from a diverse background with rich experience in their respective industries. Their collective experience will make the evaluation process robust and fair, while adjudging the works’ impact.”
Speaking about the jury, Sonia Huria, Managing Committee Member of The Advertising Club and Evangelist – ‘The Red Abby’ added:“At the heart of a successful campaign is the impact it made. In case of ‘The Red Abby’ the impact will be basis the effectiveness of the behaviour change messaging of the campaign. With such an esteemed jury for its maiden edition, we are sure that the best-in-class works will find their right place in the Abby Awards Hall of Fame.”
To nominate communications campaigns focused towards stopping violence against women click here.
In a significant move, the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), the official apex national organisation of advertising agencies, has opened its doors to digital agencies by allowing them to be full-fledged independent members. This will in particular benefit standalone, independent digital agencies which were left out from the AAAI as membership was only open to creative, media and full-service agencies. Membership to the AAAI not only helps protect their interests, and gives representation on industry forums, but also benefits the larger digital marketing ecosystem, a communique adds
Ashish Bhasin
Said Ashish Bhasin, President, Advertising Agencies Association of India: “In order to future-proof AAAI it is absolutely essential to include the digital agencies as our members since digital is an important and ever increasing part of our industry. With this in mind, Anupriya Acharya was nominated by the Executive Committee of AAAI to drive the Digital Media Forum, which has now resulted in the opening up of Membership for the Digital Agencies to become full-fledged members of Advertising Agencies Association of India, for the first time in our 75 years of history as an association. On behalf of AAAI, I welcome the Digital Agencies to our membership fold and thank Anupriya Acharya for driving this initiative”
Anupriya Acharya
Said Anupriya Acharya, AAAI Vice-President: “With digital advertising becoming so mainstream, there are many digital agencies operating in this space now. Hence, it is important that AAAI begins incorporating these too, to be truly representative of the current industry environment. In order to enable greater participation from the digital agencies, we created the first-ever Digital Agency Forum wherein we got key leaders from digital agencies of existing AAAI members to identify important areas that are unique to the digital agencies and find solutions to address some of their challenges and opportunities.”
According to an AAAI communique, the Digital Agency Forum will focus on areas such as account shift protocols, viewability standards and audience metrics, relationships with digital bodies, best practices, commercial norms, talent and training, to begin with, but will expand its role as it grows.
Goafest 2019 came to an end on Saturday evening with broadcaster Viacom18 bagging the Creative Company of the Year at Abby 2019.
Commenting on the winners, Shashi Sinha, Chair of the Awards Governing Council, Abby Awards, said: “It has been another great year of the Abby Awards We’re happy that the big winners are in Audio Visual. We have taken certain steps to encourage entries in those specific categories. We’ve opened up, bifurcated and streamlined certain categories to enable that. A lot of the work that has been entered here is very good work.”
On the rise of digital that was evident in the list of Abby winners, Vikram Sakhuja, President, The Advertising Club, added: “This has been the best year for digital ever. People are realising now what the true power of the platform is. Earlier digital was an add on, now with the advancement of the platforms the syntax has to change. In the shortlists there was almost 50-50 between digital and broadcast.”
Adding on to the evolution of digital, Ashish Bhasin President of Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) said: “In a few years we won’t differentiate between a digital agency and a non-digital agency, because down the line if an agency cannot do digital, I don’t think it can retain business. This is the democratisation that I was talking about, the market has opened up so that not only the big names, but even smaller and boutique companies are coming in with good work.”
Said Nakul Chopra, Chairman – Goafest 2019 on the tweaking and rationalisation of award categories: “There is a proactive effort we have made to be fair to all constituencies, through our various categories. At present we see more affinity towards some categories while maybe some years down the line merging of a couple of categories will make sense. While the market and field evolves, we as custodians of the market standards will simultaneously evolve to reflect those changes.”
There were a total of 2700 entries across the various creative and media categories.
Viacom18 Group CEO Sudhanshu Vats with the victorious Mindshare team
By A Correspondent
GroupM agency Mindshare bagged the Media Agency of the Year title on Day 1 of Goafest 2019. Mindshare bagged four golds of the 19 golds presented. There were a total of 62 metals awarded this year as against 38 presented last year.
Madison Media was ranked second followed by IPG Mediabrand agencies Initiative Media and Lodestar UM at No 3 and No 4 respectively. Carat, a division of Dentsu Agency Network, was placed fifth. Also presented on the first day of the three-day annual celebration of advertising and media was the Publisher Abby.
Nakul Chopra, Vikram Tanna, Vikram Sakhuja, Sudhanshu Vats, Ashish Bhasin, Jaideep Gandhi and Shashi Sinha at the inauguration ceremony of Goafest2019 | Dainik Jagran wins Best marketing of a printed newspaper edition in Publisher Abby awards at Goafest2019
The first half of the day began with singer Shaan performing live and reminiscing some of his advertising jingle days. This was followed by the Industry Conclave and later the Abby awards presentation.
Speaking about Goafest 2019, Ashish Bhasin, President of Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) said: “Over the last few years, we have seen the growth in participation with lines blurring between the media and creative disciplines. At Goafest 2019, on the back of an exclusive list of speakers and artists, we have seen a sustained registration of about 2000 delegates, while Abby Awards have seen 2700 entries this year.”
Said Shashi Sinha, Chair of the Awards Governing Council, on participation in this year’s Abby awards: “Abby Awards continues to be the gold standard in creative and media awards. In today’s scenario, creativity is no longer limited to creative agencies only. We are also increasingly seeing it coming from other industries such as digital, PR, analytics, etc. This trend is evident in the diversity of participants and winners witnessed in the Abby Awards.”
Said Nakul Chopra, Chairman – Goafest 2019: “Democratisation is a trend sweeping through the industry and we are proud of Goafest 2019 being an integral part of this change. It has been our endeavour to drive inclusivity irrespective of size and without the limitation of cost and opportunity.”
According to Vikram Sakhuja, President, The Advertising Club, there has been an attempt to rationalise categories and getting an eminent jury. “This has led to a higher participation with around 15% more agencies entering their work this year,” he said.
Goafest 2019 has Viacom18 as Presenting Sponsor and is powered by MX Player. The Industry Conclave was sponsored by Discovery Channel.
Ask anyone from the advertising business, and the one word that you’ll be told to describe the Indian outdoor industry is: unorganised. There are quite a few other adjectives which are hence assigned to the sector and that’s what creates a problem for the business.
So while no one can really ignore the power of the outdoor medium which no goes beyond billboards to a variety of outdoor opportunities, the lack of transparency necessitates a different kind of acumen to deal with the sector.
It’s not that people don’t realise this malaise. Also, the presence of a large number of internationally networked agencies in the business has indeed brought in some order. But the reality is that if the business has to grow, then it’s got to a follow processes that make sense.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Indian Outdoor Advertising Association (IOAA), after months of discussion and deliberations and both parties have arrived at a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be followed by members of both associations, with a view to regulating the Indian outdoor advertising
On the occasion, both associations echoed the sentiment that this is a landmark agreement in the long history of the outdoor Industry in India and will go a long way in building advertiser confidence in buying outdoor sites and enabling them to invest heavily in outdoor and exploiting its true
Said Nakul Chopra, President of AAAI: “I am delighted that many vexing issues have been sorted out in an amicable manner through healthy debate and discussion over the past few months and I am confident that this will go a long way in growing the OOH
Added Noomi Mehta, President of IOAA: “The IOAA is a premier association of large and established outdoor players in India and growing in strength with more outdoor owners signing up as our members. The agreement on SOP between IOAA and AAAI is a significant step and I do hope that both outdoor owners and agency owners will carry out their responsibilities in order to benefit from the advantages that the SOP spells out for both parties.â€
The outdoor media industry is highly fragmented in India with a large number of not-well-organised and small players who own sites or are concessionaires of site owners. This has led to improper utilisation of the medium and also stunted growth of the industry. This has also often led to the exploitation of either advertiser or outdoor agency or outdoor media owner, depending from which lens you view the Industry. Also, advertisers have been unable to buy outdoor with the same confidence that they buy other media.
To enable outdoor agencies to participate in the AAAI forum, AAAI has formed an Outdoor Media Forum (OMF) and AAAI-OMF has entered into a far reaching agreement with Indian Outdoor Agencies Association (IOAA- an Association of Outdoor Owners) with a view to regulate and grow the outdoor advertising industry and ensure that all parties involved, discharge their responsibility honorably and no one party gets exploited in the transaction or feels he is exploited.
L to R: Ashish Bhasin, Nakul Chopra, Ramesh Narayan and Raj Nayak
It’s Goafest and while the knowledge sessions, masterclasses and awards, are on offer, it’s the networking and meeting old friends and making new that people look forward to. And in the spirit of things, the inauguration happened with champagne.
The four heads of the organising committee – Ashish Bhasin, Ramesh Narayan, Raj Nayak and Nakul Chopra – appeared delighted that the event took off sans any hitches. Day 1 of the festival saw the Industry conclave with Archarya Balkrishna of Patanjali Ayurved being the star attraction. Other speakers included UpasanaTaku of Mobikwik and Hemant Malik of ITC Limited. The Media and Publisher Abbys were presented in the evening.
Speaking about the event, Nakul Chopra, President –  Advertising Agencies Association of India said, “Twelve years ago, Goafest began as an event for people from the world of advertising to get together to network and celebrate quality work. Today, it gives me immense pleasure to see how this festival has grown into becoming one of the foremost events in the creative calendar. It’s extremely encouraging for us to see so many young people participating in the event with such enthusiasm – and not just attending the Abbys but also showing immense amount of interest in the varied seminars that we have lined up this year. The quality of work that has been felicitated today just goes to show how India has today become a tour de force when it comes to creative thinking. If the scene on day one is anything to go by, I’m pretty sure the next two days are going to be just as exciting with some exemplary speakers taking the stage and some must attend seminars taking place.â€
Added Raj Nayak – President, The Advertising Club: “Goafest is the world’s largest industry event in the advertising industry – organized by two industry bodies coming together. In the true sense, it is an event by Indians, for Indians and completely made in India. This year, we had over 300 jurors from across the country coming together to judge the entries for which awards will be presented over these three days of the event…with almost 112 of them judging tonight’s Media and Publishing Abbys. Goafest, when it started was only a creative awards ceremony. However, today, in its twelfth edition, it has become a festival of knowledge, wisdom, entertainment, fun and a great networking opportunity.â€
Elaborating upon the event, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman, Goafest 2017 said: “With changing times, Goafest has also evolved. For the first time Goafest is going green in part by getting the delegates visiting the event to conserve water and taking other baby steps to our bit for the environment. This year we have heavily subsidized entry to let more and more young people to attend the event. It is extremely exciting for us to see so many young people participating in the event and appreciating the changes we have brought in. Curious young minds are keen to attend seminars and talks by interesting speakers this year. Day 1 has been such a huge success. We can only see this getting better and better over the next two days.â€
Said Ramesh Narayan, Chairman of the Awards Governing Council of Goafest 2017: “The atmosphere at Goafest is always filled with excitement, camaraderie and a whole lot of fun. And this year is no different. It is absolutely heartening to see members of the advertising and marketing fraternity sending in some wonderful entries this year which have kept the jury on their toes. Judging any award is a difficult process and more so when you’re pitting one excellent entry against another. All I can say is, all the winners tonight are truly deserving of the honours that have been bestowed upon them. Judging by the level of excitement today, I’m sure that the next two days are going to be absolutely spectacular.â€
Karan Bajaj kicked off the Discovery Channel presents Industry Conclave on the topic ‘Role of brands in changing India’. “The brands that we experience in this room have a deeper impact on our lives than we realise. I’m happy to be in a roomful of people who are impacting people and lives,†he said. The UpasanaTaku, Co-Founder MobiKwik, came on stage to talk about demonetisation, the growth of digital payments and powering 55 million users and 1.4 million retailers in India. “Brands have played a role in transforming India. Consumer choice drives brands, and brands have the power to transform an entire country. 86% of India’s spending is cash. It’s a massive amount of money that moves in an unaccounted manner. I truly believe it’s the era of mobile wallets, and won’t deny that demonetization has sped up the journey,†she said.There was much anticipation for the session by Hemant Malik, Divisional Chairman of ITC’s Food Business, who also spoke about e-commerce and digitisation, while acknowledging the evolution of Goafest. “We are the only carbon positive company in the world.â€
But the session that everyone waited for was by Acharya Balkrishna, CEO and MD, Patanjali. “If you learn to applaud yourself sometimes, the world will learn to applaud you,†he said. “The nation is ours, the children are ours, the life is ours. We must take care of it ourselves. Always remember, for the world India is just a market place; for us it’s our home,†he said.
Earlier, the ceremonial lamp was lit by M K Anand, MD & CEO Times Network, Piyush Sharma, CEO New initiatives India Zee Entertainment India, Karan Bajaj, Senior Vice President & General Manager, South Asia, Discovery Networks, Asia Pacific, and Nagesh Alai other than Nayak, Chopra, Bhasin and Narayan.
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) under the aegis of the AAAI Prowess initiative announced a half-day workshop ‘‘Beyond Logo– How Brands Add Value to Business’’ led by Lulu Raghavan scheduled for October 19 in Mumbai.
The interactive workshop will help participants understand the true value of brands beyond logos, colours and communications. It will equip participants with ready to deploy tools that they can use to add significant value to their clients’ businesses.
Lulu Raghavan is Managing Director of Landor Mumbai and is well-known industry commentator and thought leader.
The Indian Broadcasting Foundation announced the appointment of Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18, as the Chairman of the IBF Credit and Collections Committee & Co-Chairman of the joint IBF- AAAI Sub-Committee.
IBF in association with AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India) had formed a joint credit collections committee which scrutinizes, regulates and evaluates the credit worthiness of the advertisers active through AAAI member advertising agencies on IBF member channels. It plays a pivotal role in dispute resolution between channels and agencies vis-a-vis advertisers.
Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18, who is also an IBF Board member stated, “I am delighted to have been entrusted with this responsibility. Strengthening our relationship with the advertisers would be our goal and I look forward to introducing newer mechanisms in line with the global standards, to normalize the revenue mechanisms for all parties.â€
The outgoing Chairman I Venkat mentioned, “I know Sudhanshu would bring his ethos and greater clarity in the functioning of the Committee. I am thankful to all the members for their support and their valuable contribution and also to Ashish Bhasin , the Co- Chairman of the Committee, AAAI who helped me conduct these meetings in a more organised and transparent mannerâ€.
IBF President Uday Shankar says, ”Both Mr Vats and Mr Venkat have been valuable colleagues in the IBF Board and both deserve admiration and appreciation for taking up the task of revamping the broadcaster’s ad revenue flow. I am sure Sudhanshu will bring greater efficacy and democracy to the functioning of the Committee.â€
