ABBY awards 2002 the 35th all india awards for creative excellence
Agency Pts
Ogilvy & Mather 23
Leo Burnett 9
Ambiant D'Arcy 4
Contract Advertising 4
Enterprise Nexus 3
MTV India 3
RMG David 2
Quadrant Communications 2
Not least because India too has been caught up in the war against terrorism, with renewed sectarian clashes in Gujarat resulting in a "handle with care stamp on current business considerations for the region.
Hot on the tail of Indian/Pakistani skirmishes in the wake of last September's attacks on the US, the past eight months have been tough for a country which hosts the world's second-largest population of more than a billion people, and growing at an annual clip of 1.5 per cent.
Hardly great vastu shasdra (fung shui to you and me) for a thriving advertising industry in an emerging market, one might think. Yet, the advertising industry has not only escaped unscathed, but is thriving too - growth has hit an enviable 23 per cent.
Multinational investment continues and creatively the country has burst onto the international stage at all levels - from Arundhati Roy's Booker success of 1997, to Mira Nair's latest indie film success 'Monsoon Wedding', to the far humbler but no less noteworthy successes of the Pandey brothers, who between them have taken the lead in putting Ogilvy & Mather's Mumbai agency and the Indian advertising industry on the global creative map.
With Leo Burnett following a distant second, O&M has been quietly picking up awards and honourable mentions for the best part of five years now.
It seems O&M is on course to do it again this year. At March's Asia-Pacific Advertising Awards in Thailand, O&M picked up three television awards, Burnett, Quadrant and Saatchi & Saatchi each took home a bronze for print work. At the recently-announced One Show, O&M had five entries on the finalist list, RMG David one, Burnett two, and both D'Arcy and Quadrant one each. At press time, O&M is understood to have won a Clio bronze for the Cancer Patients Aid Association 'Cowboy' poster. With only three international award results declared to date, the jury is still out on what the final tally may be. Judging by the early reports, India, which slipped into the top 20 in 19th position in Donald Gunn's 2001 creative report, has what it takes to climb higher.
For some time now the global advertising industry has been taking a long hard look at the Indian economy and weighing up some hefty dynamics, which can critically impact the global bottom line.
A third of the size of North America, there are 24 main languages spoken, although English is increasingly the language of politics and commerce.
A federal republic, India has been a democracy since gaining independence from the British in 1947. With increased competition and deregulation, foreign investment shows no sign of abating. India is by all accounts set to continue on its current economic growth path, has a booming software export market primarily to the US and increasingly to China, and 65 per cent of the population now live above the poverty line.
At last count, there were 28 million landlines in use and three million mobile phone users. Given the infrastructure costs of increasing landlines, the mobile phone market is expected to go through the roof. Mobile phone costs, which in 1998 stood at 60,000 rupees (US$1,226) have plunged to 8,000 rupees today.
A country constantly subjected to weather hazards and politically instability, India is also big on broadcasting. The last count gave it 562 broadcast television stations and 63 million households owning a television set.
The internet age has also come quickly to India. By the close of 2000, the latest figures available, India had 43 ISPs and 4.5 million registered internet users.
Bare bones facts, but they do point to the dynamics that are making India a heavyweight market.
And when you throw in social conditions - that will be slammed as restrictive elsewhere - it only adds up further to India becoming a marketer's dream.
In the country's restrictive and traditional atmosphere, women are discouraged from going out alone. And, while seven out of 10 men can read and write, only three out of 10 women can do the same. As such, middle-class women stay inside and raise their children at home in front of the television - a fact that has not escaped marketers.
It also explains the noticeable change in tone and execution of Indian creative, a development that is helping to create a blossoming and diverse new creative persona across the board.
Led by the business interests of Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Procter and Gamble among others, India's television generation has provided a large captive audience from which to reap huge rewards.
In direct response to this, the world's leading global communications companies (WPP, Publicis and Interpublic) have in the past five years, increased equity to majority shareholdings in joint-venture operations.
Today, India is a prominent contributor to the bottom line in Asia-Pacific and its importance has increased exponentially.
The Indian advertising industry is at a critical stage in the development of a creative persona, something that has so far eluded most of its Asia-Pacific peers (bar Thailand for a while in the late '90s).
Using humour and creative resources drawn from youth channel marketing, the paradoxes are stark.
For Ranjan Kapur, O&M India's national chairman, it's proving to be a formula for success. Kapur, who sits on the global board of directors for WPP, is currently running a company, which has grown 10-fold in the past eight years. Eighty-two per cent of Kapur's total business in India derives from local but key accounts like adhesive brand Fevicol, Cadbury and Orange. "The pendulum is swinging towards the East and the jury is still out, says Kapur, who believes that building a strong creative reputation is the key to helping clients achieve business success.
Politically, there is one other significant factor that should aid India's creative development. From protectionist governments in the '80s and '90s, today's Government under Prime Minister Vajpaiyee is striving to deregulate and prise open the economy further.
That's good news for advertising, freed to grow and thrive as the Government loosens its economic grip. There's little doubt that India always had great creative ability, but market conditions certainly kept the talent submerged for a long time.
Hence India's creative successes to date have been so tentative and so few. A handful of bronzes and a couple of nominations don't add up to a Pencil.
It has been suggested that international judges may be resistant to Indian creative.
"I do not believe that a lack of cultural understanding is standing in the way of our winning awards - but this is an excuse, says Arvind Sharma, chairman of Leo Burnett India. "We need to take this emergence of creativity, which was lead by O&M like a fresh breeze in 1996, forward".
Not for the first time in its history, it's the advertising industry that is its own worse enemy. It has barriers that will hold back creative development and prevent it from meeting new market conditions.
First generation Indian advertising developed in an environment of nationalism and parochialism, relying on standards of 'good' Indian advertising which were paradoxically British, and from a bygone era where print ruled and visual communication was rejected as inferior.
"Previously the voice of god in advertising was the voice of an upper-crust English-man. Today it's the voice of the street, says Cyrus Oshidar, creative director for MTV. Oshidar is not alone in his point of view.
Agnello Dias, Burnett Mumbai's creative director, observes: "The new advertising order sweeping the world is increasingly visual. New generation creatives in India are in the thick of the battle. The old guard feel left out and are clinging to old formulas."
Socialist-leaning nationalism did not - in the eyes of the new generation - foster the development of a commercially recognisable creative persona.
To the market, any creative persona there was, ironically aped the West and is today associated with a dark age in Indian creative history.
Paradoxically then, exposure to the huge diversity of life afforded by global programming is resulting in a second wave of creativity in India, one founded on the fundamental understanding that it is quite free to draw from its own cultural heritage.
The friction created between globalisation and local prioritisation is giving rise to a resurgent pride and patriotism. As such, creatives in Indian advertising no longer feel they have to go abroad to gain critical exposure to diversity in order to develop creatively.
Fostering a frictional environment is what O&M's Piyush Pandey does very well. In Pandey's book, the successive waves of Indian expatriates who left in the 1980s and early 1990s are "cowards who ran away".
From his perch, Pandey is clear about what Indian advertising does and does not need. "I'm waiting for them to do some main line work for the likes of Pepsi or Unilever - they have all opted for boutique options.
We want to see more than Indra Sinah's, says Pandey who joined O&M in 1996. Describing himself as the creator of a creative hot bed which is currently feeding international markets such as Malaysia (where protege Sonal Dabral is currently executive creative director) and New York (where proteges Anil Batwhall and Bobbie Pawar hold fort as joint creative directors), Pandey is not advocating that creatives stop travelling, stay home and watch telly.
But he does feel that some travel restrictions are more beneficial than others. "We are very fortunate that we don't have any expats working in India, he says.
Against the rich backdrop of Indian culture creating an independent identity should not be insurmountable. Expressing this identity within a context that makes sense and using it to advantage is the challenge, and may well explain the simplicity of work like advertising for adhesive brand Fevicol, which is currently doing so well.
With great similarity to the Thai market it would be easy for the current fashion to become formulaic. To protect and foster the fragile development of the Indian advertising industry within the greater macro economic and political map will take a will of iron.
"The way to counteract this is to continue to build a positive attitude in society. Activists are increasingly facing resistance from those who are enjoying the fruits of the new economy, says Pandey, currently perceived to be the figurehead driving the new wave.
And his advice to the new generation of Indian creatives? "For the joy of beating someone at their own system - go out there and give it a go."
Let's see if they can.
