At a time when leading agencies have sent none or at best, token entries, we stretched ourselves to participate in the awards, only to come back totally disappointed. We didn’t even celebrate after winning two awards. We were all like ‘yeah right’.
Because we are not an agency listed with the AAAI we had to pay Rs. 9000 per delegate (8 out of the 10 people who came are below 30). Despite the downturn, we coughed up Rs. 90,000 just to be there.
As you know there are no campaign entries at the Abbys, which means we have to pay Rs.2000 per entry whether single or campaign. One can argue that this happens at Cannes too but then, the organizers must take the effort to publish the entries right.
Our entry for Lee Skinny Jeans was up for one whole day as an entry from W+K (see below).
After we created a noise on the second day, it was shabbily changed.
Even our second entry was wrongly listed, Happy has been listed as the client and Nirvana Films as the agency. That was really upsetting.
On the night of the Abbys, our ten strong team came for the show. We had our office boy together and just wanted him to enter for the award show. We begged and pleaded to let him in, first they said we need to pay Rs. 4500. Then after further pleading, they said Rs. 2500/-, an amount that we paid as we wanted him with us. It was a small thing and having bought 10 delegate passes, they could have easily allowed us. After all, there were enough senior creatives from other agencies walking around without any passes having sneaked in from the beach.
The fact that the results were leaked before the show was a letdown. The organizers of the festival have to understand that there are a lot of young people and agencies who look up to this. But the feeling one gets is that nobody cares. And that’s sad.
Kartik Iyer is director and co-founder, Happy Creative Services
