“We’ve broken our backs and spent a lot of money on this partnership with One Show”: Partha Sinha and Rana Barua

The Ad Club chiefs speak on taking the Abbys to an international standard, on big names missing from the awards, and more.

“Our first job was to raise the standard of The Abbys to a level where it becomes internationally competitive,” says Partha Sinha, president, The Ad Club. He and Rana Barua, chairman, Abby Awards Governing Council 2022 & vice president of The Ad Club spoke to afaqs! on the upcoming awards at Goafest 2022 that will take place from May 5-7.

Sinha believes the biggest thing to happen to the Abbys which The Ad Club’s website dubs “the Oscars of Indian ad awards to honour creative excellence in advertising” is its tie-up with the One Show, one of the world’s most prestigious awards in advertising, design, and digital marketing.

“Half the jury is supplied by One Show and the global and the Indian jury are sitting together and setting an international standard. So winning an Abby will be an achievement on a global standard and not just the local standard,” remarks Sinha. He goes on to tell us that “we’ve broken our backs and spent a lot of money on this partnership with One Show because we owe it to our industry".

Everybody wants the Abbys to become a roaring success but when big names don’t participate, it does not bode well for the awards. Says Barua, “this is year one of the One Show and we did not want to wait another year… few agencies were not able to come this year, some have financial implications some want to see how year one is, and if they don’t come back next year, it’s their loss and not the Abby’s.”

Speaking of losses, the advertising and media world has seen many waves of resignations in the past 18 months, we wondered if the awards and the event will play some role in speaking of it or making any attempt to mitigate it.

“Events have very little role in mitigating this kind of problem,” remarks Sinha and says people come to advertising for the quest for excellence. “The more it goes down, the higher becomes the existential crisis so people quit, there is burnout… this global standard of Abbys, the jury interaction which are small steps to try and get the culture of excellence back which mitigates a lot of negativity."