A moment from the Ad Club Awards. Picture by Rashbehari Das

Genocide. Napalm Death. Blood On the Streets. Reign of Terror. What’s with the violence, you ask? These were but a few of the interestingly-named categories that 707 advertisements were competing for in War Of Ideas, Creative Excellence Awards ’08, organised by the Advertising Club of Calcutta in association with The Telegraph. Killing Fields had 23 categories of prizes for advertisements and Medals of Honours had four special awards.

But the evening was not quite as grisly as it sounds, and may even be termed fun. What else would you call an event where an entire team of ad men walked in with toy drums and paper horns to give a whole new definition to blowing your own trumpet? And with reason, too, as &M bagged the Kolkata Agency of the Year award. They won six other awards including a bronze for Dignity, Safe Sex, Single Partner AIDS awareness campaign in best continuing campaign category, another for ‘Dhorna Di’, a popular Red FM advertisement in best institutional services advertisement category and a silver for best outdoor-single for their Blondes Salon campaign.

JWT’s popular Nike ad that has a bunch of cricket fanatics playing on car tops, won them gold in Arsenal — the category for best advertisement for consumer durables. “Cool idea,” is how an industry insider described JWT’s Guerrilla Highlighters campaign for Reynolds that won the bronze in best outdoor-single category. JWT was also named National Agency of The Year.

Why would a bunch of Mughal rulers and nobles be sniffing at socks, thongs and underwear instead of roses? Saatchi and Saatchi knew the answer as its still advertisement for Ariel won the silver for the best consumer products campaign. Bates David Enterprise too grabbed eyeballs with its Bandh, Barsha campaign for Anandabazar Patrika, which won them the gold in the category of best continuing campaign.

The jury, comprising Josey Paul of R.K. Swamy BBDO, Juju Basu of Saatchi and Saatchi, Sagar Mahabaleshwar of Rediffusion DYR, Souvik Mishra of Bates David Enterprise and filmmaker Anjan Dutt, had good things to say about advertising in Calcutta. “I think vernacular advertising in Calcutta is of a very good standard and far better than their English counterparts,” said Dutt.

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