Goafest 2011: It's O&M versus Mudra

The battle for the Creative Abbies is a square one between advertising agencies Ogilvy & Mather and the Mudra group. Ogilvy was the winner last year, while Mudra was the runner-up. So, if Mudra manages to pip O&M to the post this time, it will be sweet revenge. But can it do it?

Ad industry sources said Mudra had been preparing for a face-off for a while. It has sent some 750 entries this year for the creative awards – over twice those sent by rivals such as O&M, JWT, Leo Burnett and McCann-Erickson.

While this could not be immediately verified from either Mudra group MD & CEO Madhukar Kamath or Chief Creative Officer Bobby Pawar, ad agency heads admitted privately that O&M still had a strong chance of bagging the top spot, due to campaigns such as Zoozoo for Vodafone. But Mudra has its work for Volkswagen, which makes it a strong contender.

Though JWT has work for brands such as Kit Kat and Pepsi, among others, its prized possession, the Bleed Blue campaign for Nike, had to be withdrawn due to copyright issues. Bleed Blue was created with the Shanghai office of digital agency AKQA. AKQA submitted it at the recent Asia Pacific Ad Festival, where it won a silver for the Best Use of Social Media and a bronze for the Best Integrated Cyber Campaign.

JWT CEO Colvyn Harris insists the copyright of the campaign remains with his agency and not AKQA. “A major portion of the work was done by us. By withdrawing the entry from the digital category, we can pitch it next year in the Grand Prix section,” he says.

This year’s Creative Abbies have attracted some 3,700 entries from 150 organisations. The agencies that have returned to Goafest include McCann-Erickson, Contract Advertising and Saatchi & Saatchi. The notable absentees are Taproot, Publicis and Ambience.

While Nakul Chopra, CEO, Publicis, South Asia, said his agency chose to stay out owing to the self-voting issue that cropped up last year, ad agency sources said it was jurors from Publicis and Mudra who were involved in the scandal.

The controversy erupted after the organisers found nine instances of self-voting by jurors, resulting in they being asked to return their awards. This prompted the exit of auditor Ernst & Young. This year’s auditor is KPMG.

It has been monitoring the judging process carefully and doing client checks to keep scam ads out of the contest.

The head of the various juries for the creative awards include Ravi Deshpande, chairman, print jury, and Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman & regional creative director, APAC, McCann Worldgroup, who is the head of the film jury. Piyush Pandey, executive chairman & creative director, South Asia, O&M, is the head of the integrated advertising category, and K V Sridhar, national creative director, Leo Burnett, is the head of the jury for the outdoor category.