| So even as the Delhi advertising fraternity was raving about Leo Burnett's grand feat at the Delhi Advertising Club (DAC) Awards last week, Borah was already attending a conference in Goa, telling young creative minds how to come up with world-class commercials. |
| Leo Burnett did what JWT had done at the DAC Awards last year "" it swept the show with 18 awards including that of the 'the agency of the year'. |
| Borah's work on McDonald's, Atlas, United Colors of Bennetton, Chanakya Cinema and National Geographic won in various media categories. "But we lost the campaign of the year award to Domino's (Contract Advertising)," he says. |
| "It's heartening to see Indian creatives compete with international advertising. There are an amazing number of not just Indian entries but winners at most international festivals," he says. |
| Borah's ad for an Italian seafood restaurant Senso won a Cannes Bronze last year. It also bagged other international awards at One Show and Ad Fest while his Tiger Graph ad for Sanctuary magazine was a Clio finalist last year. |
| In fact, the two are his favourite works too. The Senso ad shows an Italian mafiosi shooting in the sea while the tiger campaign plots the diminishing cat population on a tiger skin graph. |
| "The ads convey the message very simply," says Borah. In fact, simplicity is becoming popular in advertising. |
| Simple, interesting and uncluttered advertising seems to be the order of the day as creatives are increasingly realising that people don't have the time to analyse complex ads. |
| That's why, the Tortoise mosquito repellent ad (from Everest Advertising) where an irritated ear flaps a mosquito to death is among his favourites. |
| A graduate from the Delhi College of Art, Borah began his creative career with O & M and then moved on to Clarion where he bagged the American Marketing Effectiveness Award in 1996. Since then there's been no looking back. |
| Right now, he claims to be busy working on Coke (regional), Aircell, National Geographic and McDonald's. Borah says Leo Burnett follows stringent standards evolved by the Global Product Committee (GPC) which evaluates entries from various centres across the world on a scale of 1-10 (from 'appalling' to 'best in the world'). |
| "I have to produce quality work lest the GPC trashes the spot as 'appalling' or 'destructive'," he says. |
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