All Star winner of Portfolio Night 14 announced

Arshi Sayed, an alumna of ecole intuit.lab, was declared the ‘All Star’. She will go to New York City and work with other All Star winners as a team on a creative task for a major global assignment.

The 14th edition of Portfolio Night, held by Whyness and The One Club on May 23 at the Mumbai campus of école intuit.lab, saw 51 participants taking part at the event and their work reviewed by 23 judges. Portfolio Night was held simultaneously across 20 cities on May 23.

Arshi Sayed (21), an alumna of école intuit.lab was declared the ‘All Star’. She will go on an all-expense paid trip to New York City and work with other All Star winners as a team on a creative task for a major global assignment.

For the review process, as always, the aspirants were divided into three batches and each aspirant got the opportunity to get his/ her portfolio reviewed by three creative directors. Each CD met three candidates individually for 15 minutes and reviewed their work and ideas and offered them valuable feedback.

The creative heads who reviewed the work at the event included Ravi Deshpande (Whyness and école intuit.lab), Josy Paul (BBDO India), Amer Jaleel (Mullen Lintas), Amit Akali (Medulla Communications and What’s Your Problem), Carlton D’silva (Hungama Digital Services), Ashwini Deshpande (Elephant Design), Manish Bhatt (Scarecrow M&C Saatchi), Raj Kamble (Famous Innovations), Sumanto Chattopadhyay (Soho Square), Sajan Raj Kurup (Creativeland Asia), Raj Nair (Madison BMB), Sonal Dabral (Ogilvy & Mather), Satbir Singh (Thinkstr), Viral Pandya (Out of the Box), KV Sridhar (Hyper Collective), Prashant Godbole (ideas@work), Nima Namchu (Havas Worldwide India), Ashish Chakravarty (Contract Advertising), Mangesh Rane (Open Strategy & Design), Prasoon Joshi (McCann Worldgroup India), Kurnal Rawat (Fitch), Alok Nanda (Alok Nanda and Company), and Bhupal Ramnathkar (Umbrella Design).

About what his expectations were from this year’s young participants compared to the previous Portfolio Nights, Ravi Deshpande, founder and chairman, Whyness and ecole intuit.lab, told afaqs! at the start of the event, “The fundamental things won’t change whether it is the past, now or the future, on looking for powerful ideas, which remains constant. Having said that, we are now looking for an idea being developed on different platforms. Could there be a brilliant design idea that can help brands speak a different language and make a bigger impact or could there be a link that brands advertising in physical spaces combine with digital in an integrated way? Could there be a great product idea that could change the future of brands? We would be looking for diverse thinking across platforms.”

During the judging process, afaqs! caught up with a few experts and asked them how they found the current lot of participants compared to the previous Portfolio Nights.

Carlton D’silva, chief creative officer and chief executive officer, Hungama Digital Services, says, “I have judged Portfolio Night in the past and the candidates who have come this time are far better possibly because they also have great school backing. The good part about it was I saw a lot of differentiation about work. I saw a lot of great print design work and a lot of lovely ideas on digital and I also saw a couple of people who are very good with content. All the areas were pretty much covered when it came to advertising.”

Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder, director, Elephant, says, “Some candidates were very interesting, some were up and coming. So, I think there are some years to go before they become outstanding. What was very interesting was that a couple of candidates had very good insights which creative people forget because the idea becomes so important that you lose track of the insight and the problem you were trying to solve. Some of the candidates had chosen only social impact topics, so at a very young age, to think about social impact is very good.”

Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer, BBDO India, says, “I saw six people and I know all of them can’t be the people we want to meet, but there were few who really impacted me. One of those people was so nervous that she was shivering while presenting, but the work was superb and what I liked about her was that she had not come with a superiority complex of good work, but the doubt of ‘I can do better’ and that’s what I loved the most.”

He adds, “The other person was three dimensional and holistic and I felt she was ahead of her time and not everybody will understand her and people like her will find it very difficult to work in an agency set-up where the hierarchy could kill her and would need a mentor who would understand that she has a sense of a future which is different. These two people really left an impact on me because I try to look for difference and divergence. The other four I met weren’t bad, but I felt they weren’t being true to themselves.”