As chairman of the awards governing council at this year’s Goafest, Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar UM India, has just one goal. His mandate is to ensure that the controversies surrounding the Creative Abbys do not resurface at the 2011 festival. In an interview with FE’s Pritha Mitra Dasgupta, Sinha talks about how he plans to keep the Creative Abbys clean. Edited excerpts.
How many agencies were asked to return the awards last year?
Last year there were nine awards that came back from 4-5 agencies. So the final decision that we took last year was that where a vote is affected, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that award should come back.
Does Ernst & Young (E&Y) continue to be the auditor?
I am not sure. We are in talks with many auditors and most likely we will have someone new. I am not blaming E&Y. But if we are starting on a clean slate we need to have the comfort level and there should be fresh thinking.
How did you manage to keep the Media Abbys clean?
I also wonder how I managed it (quips). Actually, the credit should go to the fraternity. The media agency heads felt that the awards are important but it was also important to have fun. They realised that awards are not a matter of life and death. When I started running the media awards there were attempts to pollute it and we, as a fraternity, got together and blocked it.
Can we avoid scam ads in Goafest?
There are 3-4 aspects to this. First, I have learnt a new word called ?proactive work? which the fraternity calls this kind of work. They don’t call them ?scam ads? like you do. I am told that globally in all the awards ceremonies there is ?proactive work?. In case of Goafest, we wil get the jury chairman to decide. Our job as the awards governing council is to take control and make sure that the process is right. To define what is a good ad, what is a proactive ad, what is to be judged, not judged, that is the fraternity’s call. And then the jury chairman will have to decide. I am told globally this proactive work is acknowledged. I am also told that it?s a lot less this year.
What are you doing this year to ensure that the results are not leaked and that the judging process is fair?
First, we are doing voting over two rounds. Round one will be the shortlist. Then we will put the shortlist on our website. So if anyone has any complaint or objection against any ad they can press the alarm. And when the second round of judging starts, the jury chairman and the jury members will take note of the complaints. When the judging starts we will do secret voting. Grand Prix voting will be completely secret as mostly, the leaks happen around this. The advantage is one will know who has voted for which ad. This year the voting will be done online and the final tally won’t happen manually. And therefore no one will be able to fiddle with it.
How do you plan to resolve the confusion around who has got the maximum number of awards?
We deliberately kept the idea of ?agency of the year? award out of Goafest. The general feeling was that by giving this award to one agency, we will be alienating others. However, there is a lot of confusion among media people regarding the final tally. So we have decided to give a written tally this time. We will give it in an alphabetical order and not any rank-wise.