Adman enters Limca Book of Records for Inpublicinterest.in

Chakraborty believes that the website has the power to ignite individuals to do something constructive and make an impact in their own way, and thus pay the advertising industry back.

Sanjay Chakraborty, an advertising professional from Ahmedabad, Gujarat has made his entry into the Limca Book of Records for launching Inpublicinterest.in, a website dedicated to public service advertising. The website houses a collection of video ads and is designed to inform the public on issues that are frequently considered to be in the best interests of the community at large. Chakraborty is currently associated with Mumbai-based agency Triton Communications as associate vice-president, brand services.

The website, which was launched three years ago, redirects the users to a YouTube channel that hosts a collection of television advertisements on issues related to public interest collected from across the globe. The advertisements have been aggregated from various global advertising sources and houses both Indian and international ads. According to Chakraborty, the ratio of domestic and international ads is 70:30.

Explaining to afaqs! the idea and inspiration behind launching this website, Chakraborty says that there were two primary reasons behind the launch. "The first intent was to create a reference point for those in the advertising industry who want to have some understanding about public service advertisements. Secondly, in isolation, this website should inspire the general public towards issues related to their interest," he adds.

Besides, Chakraborty believes that the website has the power to ignite individuals to do something constructive and make an impact in their own way, and thus pay the advertising industry back.

Explaining why Limca chose to induct his website in the list, Chakraborty states that Limca decides the entries on various criterion that include metrics like 'first, longest or unique' and Inpublicinterest.in being the only such web property, Limca chose to reward it.

Chakraborty further informs that they are open to people participating in content generation for the portal. "When anyone finds an interesting video ad, they can send in the video to the email mentioned on the site and post our approval, it gets published on the channel," he says.

Speaking on the commercial viability of the portal, Chakraborty adds that he does not intend to earn anything from this initiative. "This is an unbiased platform targeted to contributing to the society. The moment we plan to commercialise this, we will lose the unbiased factor. Moreover, the content is sourced and not original and thus we don't have the right to earn from curated content."

Chakraborty promotes the platform through social media and partnerships with websites to cross promote the website's links. In the recent past, Chakraborty was also named in the India Book of Records for being the only advertising professional visiting the maximum number of management institutes to deliver sessions.