Anant’s blog: The debate continues

The responses to yesterday’s post, for a change, have been largely constructive, and readers have stayed away from personal attacks.

As comments came in and I kept track of them, I said that I would do a consolidated post encapsulating the unique opinions.

I’ll hold that for a few hours.

In a couple of hours, I understand, the Ad Club Bombay will issue a press release on the decisions arrived at with respect to the judging issue.

It would make a lot more sense to wait for the release and read it in conjunction with the comments from all of you before attempting to write a consolidated wrap up piece. Whatever the decisions taken, the press release is certain to trigger a fresh round of polarized opinions.

For too long, organizations such as the Ad Club and the AAAI have been criticized for not being inclusive in their decision making. It’s an accusation that is only partly justified – because, for too long, professionals in the industry have been loth to voice their opinions in public.

Most of the members of the management committees of the two organizations are open to suggestions and opinions from all and sundry. In the absence of opinions and suggestions from people like you, many of the decisions that they take seem to be arbitrary.

In the Internet age, it’s that much easier to get across to people, organizations and even governments. On a day like today, when the Abbys’ reputation has certainly taken a beating, a groundswell of opinion from adlanders (positive, negative, supportive, critical) will help put the award back in the spotlight for the right reasons.

It’s now been a little over two years since we launched campaignindia.in. I’m more than puzzled by the lack of comments on stories – especially since we do not moderate comments and do not require registration or login before commenting.

For reasons that I can’t figure out, the last month has been good from an interactivity perspective. More comments (not always healthy comments), more provocation, more arguments, more debate.

And God knows that more debates are needed in the industry.

Catch you in a couple of hours with one debate that we could have done well without.