Ad Club Madras Awards: Clean sweep for HTA, Chennai

Was it the lack of competition (with O&M and Lowe giving the SPARK a miss) or was it due anyway? This is a question that will perhaps be more hotly debated than the debate in the ‘coffee-toffee' ad made famous by HTA.

After missing it for two year, HTA Chennai, was back in the reckoning at the 25th Ad Club Madras Awards, held in the city last evening. The overpowering combination of work from HTA, Chennai and Bangalore ensured the agency walked away with awards in almost all categories - automobile (Ford Ikon, Mondeo), television (KTV), cellular services (Spice Telecom), beverages (Red Label) … you name it. In all HTA, Chennai, bagged 16 awards including the Agency of the Year Award and the Best Art Director of the Year Award, which went to Jaju. In its turn, HTA, Bangalore, walked away with 10 awards.

But even before the well-orchestrated event could take off, the chief of jury, Chakravarthy (Chax, ex-creative director, Leo Burnett) in his recorded message rued that the local flavour was missing from bulk of the work. He said that work done for print was spectacular, while some of the work done for radio was outstanding, but most of the work for TV was abysmal in execution. He also pointed out most agencies were extremely shoddy in sending their entries. They had sent entries for the sake of it, rather than paying attention to the category in which the work could have been showcased well.

Significantly, many of the categories went unrewarded - including calender, video film, cinema advertising, packaging and unpublished creative work. In all, there were many bronze awards, very few silver and hardly any golds. The idea was to reward quality work, said the organisers. Though some in the audience insisted that HTA had no competition to speak of, there were, in fact, some interesting entries from Bangalore - on behalf of Saatchi & Saatchi, Grey Worldwide and McCann Erickson.

In the final tally, the campaign for Ford (Ikon, Mondeo and corporate) got nine awards in various categories, while Spice Telecom got six. Significantly, TBWA Anthem for its Single Press Colour Campaign for Malayala Manorama bagged the rare gold award. Another interesting award went to St Gobain which entered on its own and bagged a gold for the category Television - English. Citibank, which had also entered the Awards on its own, managed to pick up an award in the TV Vernacular (30 sec) category for its MTV-Citibank card. However, there was some confusion on this as the creative for this was actually done out of Rediffusion's Mumbai office.

As always, local production work was prominent among the awards given out. Reelroutes won a silver for Coca-Cola (category Television - Vernacular 30-sec); Sasi won a bronze (for category Promo Spots); Dzine Garage won two bronze awards in the Website category; Takewings won a bronze for the category Logotype; Edies Vision won a bronze for the category Occasional for the promotion work done for the movie Dhil. Sharad Haksar, the photography wizard from Chennai, walked away with kudos in several categories for his work on Derby. © 2002 agencyfaqs!