Madison wins M.AD Quiz 2003; Mudra is first runner-up

Following three rounds of intensive quizzing, Madison Media's two-member team of Rajiv Gopinath and Joydeep Choudhury won this year's M.AD Quiz (the Marketing and Advertising Quiz), organized by the Bombay Ad Club on the evening of December 12 at the City Studio, Lower Parel, Mumbai. The team from Madison emerged champions by beating Mudra Communications, IMRS and O&M in the finals, and in the process, took away the largest hamper of gifts and cash prizes, not to mention the opportunity to seat themselves on the Seat of Fame. The team from Mudra Communications - comprising Arindam Chatterjee and Aditya Kanthy - claimed the second spot, while IMRS came in third. O&M was the last among the four finalists.

This year, a total of 42 teams contested the M.AD Quiz at the preliminary stage. Of these, eight teams (ICICI Bank, IMRS, Lowe, Madison, Mudra, Network Advertising and two teams from O&M) made it to the semi-finals. The two-stage semifinals saw the elimination of four teams (ICICI Bank, Lowe, Network and one of the O&M teams), leaving the field open to the four teams that eventually contested the finals.

Madison, which clocked a total of 120 points in the finals, was the clear winner with a sizeable lead of 45 points over second-placed Mudra (75 points). In fact, Madison had established such an early lead over the other contenders that it was fairly comfortably placed even before a critical round - suggestively called Undercutting, and characterized by a high gain-high loss scoring pattern - got underway, allowing the media men to play it absolutely safe. Interestingly, it was this round that witnessed a seesawing of fortunes for the second, third and fourth-placed teams. Mudra, for instance, was trailing the field at one stage, and it looked as if the teams from IMRS or O&M would slug it out for the first runner-up's spot. But one correct answer at a crucial stage fetched Mudra 30 points, allowing it to pull ahead of IMRS and O&M. In the final tally, Mudra edged past IMRS (63 points) by a 12-point margin, while IMRS, in turn, nudged O&M out by a meager five points.

Hosted by Derek O'Brien, this year's quiz - which centered at the theme of ‘Only Advertising', which O'Brien said was the brief he had been given by the Ad Club - had some rather innovative quizzing formats, making the finals, in particular, quite engaging and interactive from the audience point of view. While the above-mentioned Undercutting was one interesting round, another, called Headhunters, saw ad veterans Ajay Chandwani and Bharat Dhabolkar, filmmaker Rajiv Menon, and Pradeep Guha of the Times Group help the four finalists in fielding questions.

However, in terms of sheer interactivity, the final round - called Out of the Box II - was incomparable, as it involved every member of the audience. The round consisted of four questions, one to each the four teams, but the interactivity came in the form of matchboxes secretly taped under the audience's chairs. As it turned out, everyone in the audience had one matchbox, inside which was a potential answer to one of the four questions O'Brien was to put to the teams. The catch: only four matchboxes held the right answer to one or the other of the four questions, leading to much anticipation and cheering.

Overall, the questions were a mixed bag, consisting of some really good ones (What did Bayer market in the early 1900s as a cure for cough and even stomach colic in babies? The answer: Heroin) and some outright sitters, like the identify-the-advertiser ads for Heineken (the brilliantly art-directed ‘bottoms-up' ad) and PETA (‘I will never be seen dead with fur'). But then, as O'Brien himself remarked, in quizzing, if you know the answer it's an easy quiz, and if you don't, it's a tough one.

The evening wasn't all serious quizzing. In fact, CHannel [V] VJs Gaurav Kapoor and Kim set the ball rolling by doing a mock Spot the Chaddi Contest for the audience, which involved identifying, among other things, the colour and material of the thong worn by Shefali Jariwala in the ‘Kaanta laga' video! It must be added that Gaurav didn't let the opportunity of taking a potshot at the MTV Immies (which were held on the same evening at Goregaon Sports Club) go by.

However, one of the best things that the evening had to offer was reserved for the last: 22-year-old music prodigy Raghav Sachar, who, as the bill says, can play over 22 musical instruments. Sachar started his performance with a slow, soulful number as the curious and the skeptic sauntered in listen to him. Two numbers later, he had his audience rooted to the spot, feet tapping and swaying appreciatively to the beat. It took a polite but firm ‘thank you' to get the audience to stop asking for ‘one more'. Those who'd hung around were happy they'd hung around. Those who left… well, they plain missed Sachar. © 2003 agencyfaqs!