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<font color="#FF0033"><b>Abby 2005 Countdown</b></font>: O&M is gung ho about SBI Life
Besides traditional winners, the agency has a few new names to add to its nominations list
“The nomination list ran into three-four pages,” says Sumanto Chattopadhyay, senior creative director, O&M, in mock despair. Around 80 entries from the O&M factory have been nominated this year. No wonder, competitors such as Adrian Mendonza (of Rediffusion) quip, “O&M is all set to clinch the Agency of the Year award simply on the back of the sheer number of its nominations.”
Chattopadhyay haws and hums at the Herculean task of picking out his favourites. “There are so many great pieces of work. It's difficult to talk about just a few,” he complains. But after some dogged persistance, this is what he came up with.
SBI Life, with its lovable old couple, has been everyone’s favourite, says Chattopadhyay. There has been some interesting work for Maharashtra Tourism (print) as well, he adds.
“Fevicol, this year, is very hot in the print campaign category, while the year saw some fantastic Perfetti work,” he says, referring to the Chocotella campaign.
Hutch, this year, may be a difficult act to follow simply because of the stupendous success of the campaign last year, he says. “But this year too, the work has been excellent.”
In fact, according to Chattopadhyay, Hutch, Fevicol, Cadbury’s, Asian Paints and Amaron are best examples of how great advertising is about the perfect mix of creative work and effective brand building. His list of favourites also includes the agency’s Social Service Campaign for AIDS awareness and adoption campaign.
Industry Buzz: SBI Life is on top of everybody’s mind, though opinion seems divided on Chocotella and Hutch. Some industry leaders are a bit disappointed with the Hutch work, even though the creative still rode high on popularity. Both Amaron and Fevicol are generally described as ‘more of the same’, though the Fevicol print campaign has definitely more takers.
Asian Paints is also high on the list as is the AIDS campaign. Another question that remains is whether O&M will be able to match up its sterling performance of 2001, when it scored a staggering 58 points. It was a feat that even the agency has not been able to match up since then.
© 2005 agencyfaqs!