Scarecrow creates 9 posters to promote Abby 2017

Each ad is about a different award category. A quick look at the campaign.

Goafest 2017, which will be jointly organised by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and The Advertising Club, has rolled out a new campaign for the Abbys. The 12th edition of the festival will be held at The Grand Hyatt, Bambolim from April 6 to 8, 2017.

It is for the 10th year that The Advertising Club and AAAI will come together to deliver the Abby Awards, India's premier awards in the field of advertising that celebrate creativity. Therefore, the campaign, conceptualised by Scarecrow Communications (the agency that also worked for the Abbys 2016), depicts the spirit and ethos of the awards through a series of print ads.

There are two key elements that have been carried forward from the last year's campaign - 'Made in India', and 'Of the Industry, By the Industry, For the Industry' - due to its relevance.

According to Ramesh Narayan, chairman, Awards Governing Council - Goafest 2017, it is truly a home grown award that is run by industry associations for the industry itself. "There are two parts to this year's campaign. The first part is what you see now. The key elements are a result of a sound understanding of what the Abby brand stands for. To an extent, it is also tactical because it deals with individual categories in a very creative manner. For the continuing thread, Manish Bhatt, founder-director, Scarecrow Communications, came up with the 'Made in India' idea. And the 'Industry' idea was propounded by Raj Nayak, president, The Advertising Club, and me," informs Narayan.

Till now only nine print ads have been released. The remaining ones will be launched very soon while digital-leg of the campaign is expected to follow early next week. Phase two of the campaign will primarily be digital, but would also include print, and direct marketing.

"The second part of the campaign will break very soon. It has evolved from a wonderful idea that (Manish) Bhatt and his team presented to us early December, last year. It is emotive and deals with a very fundamental fact that is close to all our hearts. He said that most industry stalwarts and creative leaders have shared their personal journey along with the venerable 63-year-old Abby. We extended his thought to include almost all the brands around us. This shared journey between brands and the Abby, and the organic role that the Abby has played in our lives, are being communicated evocatively by (Manish) Bhatt and the Scarecrow team in a series of ads," says Narayan.

Acknowledging the changing environment, this year 'Mobile' has been given an independent status within the digital category. The topic for the Young Abby's has also been changed. This year the topic is 'Conserving water in an urban scenario', and Narayan hopes that the young minds will come up with creative ways to urge people to save water.

Entries for all the categories can be uploaded online. In this edition of the Abbys, the jury too, will decide the short-list online. So there will be only one physical round of judging.

Speaking about the campaign, Bhatt says, "Last year, in order to sharpen the positioning, we (Scarecrow team) decided to highlight the fact that Abbys is a 'Truly Indian Award' because it is governed by an industry body, and is judged only by an Indian jury. We also tried to tell people why they should believe in brand Abby."

"This year too, all the ads try to tell people that Abbys is truly about honouring and awarding the Indian advertising. There are two parts of the campaign - functional and thematic. Whatever has been released until now is the functional part of the campaign, which means through these ads a lot of information is being conveyed such as 'Entries Open Now', 'These are the New Categories', etc. This is because even iconic brands interestingly communicate functional attributes, for example all the Volkswagen campaigns are largely functional ads - they talk about various features but are still very engaging. That's the approach we had while making these ads," he says.

The agency had released a hashtag for last year's campaign '#That'sWhyAbby'. The agency will be launching a similar hashtag this year too.

Going down memory lane, Bhatt says, "Back in 2008, my colleague Raghu Bhatt and I created viral films. We even recreated an exclusive font to design the logo of Goafest, and it has been retained till date. For the last two years, the biggest challenge for us is that our work will be analyzed by the clever lot, basically the smarter people who are extremely talented, have seen the world and are hard to please. So, when your target audience is actually smarter than you, then it's a big challenge."

'Here's a look at the ads'.