N. Shatrujeet
Advertising

Saatchi team heads for Cannes, courtesy AAAI's Young Creatives Contest

The young team from Saatchi India will have the honour of officially representing India at this year’s International Young Creatives Contest

A team from Saatchi & Saatchi India comprising young creative talents Vinod Lal Heera Eshwer, Kalpesh Patankar and Prachi Patil has been adjudged the winner of this year's AAAI Young Creatives Contest, the annual national-level creative initiative undertaken by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), and supported by the Times of India Group.

As is the custom, the winning team will have the honour of officially representing India at this year's International Young Creatives Contest, which will be organized under the aegis of the Cannes International Advertising Festival to be held in June. The team from Saatchi India would be among the forty-five-odd teams from across the globe that would compete in the prestigious International Young Creatives Contest. For the record, last year, Nishant Gangadharan and Mark Flory of Orchard Advertising, Bangalore, made the AAAI-sponsored trip to Cannes.

A prepared statement issued by the AAAI states that for this year's national contest, the advertising body invited entries centered at the theme, ‘Each one, teach one'. Over 150 entries from 52 INS-accredited advertising agencies were judged by R Balakrishnan (Balki) of Lowe, Mohammed Khan of Enterprise Nexus, Piyush Pandey of O&M and Goutam Rakshit of Advertising Avenues, the press release further states. The end objective of the advertising that the youngsters created was to instill a sense of responsibility in people to lend a helping hand in educating poor/destitute children.

The winning entry from Saatchi India - titled ‘beggar boy' - has the visual of a kid defecating by the railway tracks. The copy draws attention to the fact that the alms given to boy the previous evening ends up as feces, and that giving alms to street urchins really serves no larger purpose. "You give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. You teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That is the basic thought that we wanted to communicate through the ad," says Eshwer. "The stark visual simply highlights the point being made."

While Eshwer is undoubtedly pleased at the prospect of representing India at Cannes, specific to the entry that he and his mates have created, Eshwer is of the opinion that such ads will serve their purpose only when they get released in the media. "These are ads created for a noble cause, but nobody other than a few people in the jury ever get to see them," he says. "The whole exercise of creating such advertising is meaningless if the public doesn't get to see it, and if it doesn't make a difference to somebody's life."

We agree wholeheartedly. While giving creatives in agencies an avenue to express themselves is hugely commendable, the idea shouldn't be to simply deliver a pat on the back for a job well done. Any good work deserves to see the light of day, and if it's work promoting a cause, it deserves to be seen that much more. After all, an unreleased public awareness ad is the most self-defeating of the lot. Perhaps all it requires is for bodies such as the AAAI and the Bombay Ad Club to use their good offices to get some space in the media… © 2004 agencyfaqs!

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