This year?s Portfolio Night hosted by Ogilvy Mumbai on May 26, saw more participation, more judges and better-prepared aspirants. For India, this was the second edition of the event.
Portfolio Night is an annual event organised by ihaveanidea, one of the largest communities of the international advertising industry, in 2002. Top creative directors (CDs) in the advertising business come together to review the portfolios of young, aspiring copywriters, art directors and designers, many of whom are lucky enough to get hired immediately. The event happens simultaneously across several cities around the world.
The second edition saw 81 participants as compared to 67 participants in 2010. Their portfolios was judges by 27 creative directors from across the agencies. Last year 23 creative directors had attended the event. This year’s judges included O&M’s executive chairman and creative director-South Asia Piyush Pandey, national creative directors (NCD) Rajiv Rao, Abhijit Avasthi, executive creative directors (ECDs) Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Zenobia Pithawalla and Anup Chitnis, and group creative director Ajay Gehlaut; Taproot India co-founders Santosh Padhi and Agnello Dias; Leo Burnett’s NCD KV Sridhar, Grey India’ s NCDs Amit Akali and Malvika Mehra, Saatchi& Saatchi’s chief creative officer Ramanuj Shastry, Lowe’s NCD Arun Iyer, Corcoise Films’ director and founder Prasoon Pandey and others.
Talking about this year’s event, Piyush Pandey said, ?It is a fantastic platform for the youth because earlier it used to be an informal scenario where young people had to go to each and every agency with their portfolios, but now they can meet senior creative directors under one roof.” O&M hired six people last year and plans to make at least five offers this year.
The event saw an interesting mix of participants which included youngsters straight out of college and working professionals with several years of experience, trying to make it big. Asif Shakeel, an O&M employee with 11 years of work experience in client servicing, said, “I want to get into copywriting. It was amazing to have my work judged by Piyush Pandey as he has been an inspiration to me all my life. He has told me to meet our NCD, Rajiv Rao, tonight.”
Aniket Thirwani who works at creative hotshop Flyfish Communication said, ?Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Pandey liked my work but they felt that I did much better work when I was in college. It was an extremely constructive feedback. They told me that I needed to team up with the right person to enhance my skill.?
Talking about the quality of portfolios presented this year, Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and chief creative officer, Creativeland Asia said, ?This year’s work was much better than last year. Last year, the portfolios were too raw.?
Agreed Bhat: ?People were more prepared in various aspects. They did not bring a stack of their entire work. It was only selective work and that gave us time to filter the portfolios faster and then also ask HR (human resource) related questions if we wanted to hire them. This time there were a lot of copy portfolios. Also, last year , a lot of people came with regional stuff but they could not write in English at all, but this year, there were bilingual people with a fair knowledge of English.? Bhat met nine people, shortlisted four of them and has given job offers to two already. Scarecrow did not hire anyone last year.
After the first round itself, Ashish Khazanchi, NCD and vice-chairman, Publicis Ambience, made a job offer to one youngster. Khazanchi had hired two people as trainees at last year’s Portfolio Night. However, he thought there should be some sort of filter before the CDs actually view the portfolios. Bhat, however, disagreed. ?There are a lot of talented people who end up in small agencies and thus their portfolios do not really reflect what they are actually capable of. For many of them, this is the only chance to meet senior creative people. My suggestion is that only art CDs should look at art portfolios and copy CDs at copy portfolios,? he said.