Indian entries won 13 metals, and a host of nominations. Tribal DDB, Grey Worldwide and Saatchi & Saatchi won three metals each, while JWT won two, and Ogilvy and McCann one each. There was no gold, though, for Indian agencies.Prasoon Joshi, Regional Creative Director (South and South East Asia), McCann Erickson, was Chairman of the film jury at the festival. After the New York, London International, Clio and Cannes juries, and the Asia Pac Fest now, he is all set to take off again, as a juror for D&AD 2006. His take on the judging experience at the Asia Pacific Ad Fest:" It was a totally new experience for me. I have chaired juries earlier internationally, but they were national juries of the respective countries - Indonesia, Philippines, etc. There were many new learnings, and everyone who was part of the jury was a name in his or her own country. Taking so many opinions together and arriving at a consensus was quite an experience! An award like the Asia Pacific Ad Fest is something significant for Asia. It has already become the highest regarded festival in Asia. Often, Asian sensibilities get ignored in international awards. Since the jury was purely Asian, we had to take extra care in analyzing the work. For
example we had two Japanese creative directors - one of them was from Hakuhodo and the other from Dentsu, both of which are huge agencies in that country. One of them couldn't understand English. There was this commercial for promoting milk among teenagers that he was trying to explain to us. We needed to get in an interpreter all the time. We didn't think much of the commercial at first glance. It was not done by his agency, and he was defending the work because he understood the context of the creative route the ad had taken. Finally, it won! He successfully explained to us why it was great - for teenagers in Japan, milk is unfashionable. The commercial tackled that problem very creatively, taking an almost fantasy route.
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