Ever seen a dentist with bad teeth? Or a designer, poorly dressed? Or an unkempt hairstylist?
The point is simple. We are all walking advertisements for the professions we practise. Ultimate endorsements of the fact that what we are selling is indeed worth buying. Remember the famous restaurant sign, The Owner Eats Here? It was probably the first and most effective self-endorsement ever.
Surprisingly, however, while the advertising industry has been advocating this on behalf of their clients from the beginning of time, it is only recently that its professionals have begun practising it for themselves.
Lately, the inside buzz at almost all award shows has invariably been about the packaging and presentation of the work. For some time now, those in the know have meticulously gone about crafting the quality of the print proofs, the broad white margins for separation, the almost art poster style of finish that make you want to take off the logo and hang it on your wall, even right down to directors’ cut commercials.
So, while presentation techniques at award shows slowly got refined to a rarefied skill, with secret techniques passed down to the chosen few, they also got more and more critical over time.
This year of course, it’s all out in the open. Presentation skills, particularly in categories like Ambient, On Ground, Guerrilla, Innovation, Direct, Integrated, etc. are now par for the course. And the word is out, loud and clear. Your work is only as good as your presentation looks. Everything you do over the course of a whole year can amount to nothing if your case does not impress the jury.
So, here is the new reality. Agencies around the world are leaving no stone unturned to get the best packaging possible for every idea that gets entered. And the blunt truth is, the finest talents among the best networks are spending their waking hours on packaging work rather than creating it. There are even stories of stellar creative teams being flown across continents to put together an entry that a normal, hardworking team has created in the course of an average day at work.
More From This Section
Undoubtedly, it shows. Most pieces, particularly in the non-mainstream categories, are impeccably put together, archival case studies that could hold their own in any documentary film festival. Marked by extreme clarity of thought, dramatisation of the idea and exhaustive coverage of the obviously good results.
Welcome to the advertising of the advertisement. After all, if we are persuasive enough for our own tribe, imagine what we could do to innocent target audiences out there. Or so the thinking goes.
Meanwhile, outside the Palais de Festival, the R-word has displaced the weather as the conversation starter of choice. Suddenly creative people are sounding more like armchair economists than poets, musicians and artists. While theories about the global carnage range from the lateral to the ludicrous. And though everyone has a good word to say about India, the truth is we can’t cope for much longer without the rest of the world pulling through.
Along the Cote d’Azur though, a few spirited parties and feisty poodles apart, the mood is sombre and determined rather than the typically celebratory. The question no longer is, “Where are we going to party tomorrow?” but “What do we do when we get back home?”
I have a theory about this myself. The ancient Indian texts prescribe a day of fasting every now and then to cleanse the system. I think these are those days. I have little doubt that global creativity will come out of it - leaner, stronger and even more effective than ever before.
Bad times after all teach us much more than the good ones. Ask Dhoni.
(The author, popularly known as Aggie, is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Taproot India)