Advantage: Service

For Manish Bhatt, creative director of Ambience D’Arcy, PSCs are a fabulous pitch. ‘‘Even though I can’t work on international clients, there are global issues such as child sexual abuse and literacy that offer tremendous scope,’’ he says.

While a few members of the fraternity such as Prasoon Joshi, McCann’s national creative head, laud the attempt to address Western advertising juries, R Balakrishnan (or Balki as he is called), Lowe’s national creative head dismisses them as campaigns created ‘by the agency and for the agency’ and instead roots for the hard-hitting genre like the Balbir Pasha drive for AIDS. ‘‘There’s nothing wrong with addressing a global audience. So what if the agency gains mileage if the cause is genuine?’’ argues Pushpinder Singh, creative director, O&M, Mumbai who conceived the Cannes winner for Cancer Patients Aids Association this year. By raising the bar, the craft has improved and the outlook has turned more minimalistic, Joshi adds. In fact, Singh was disappointed when the ‘asterisk’ print didn’t pick up an ABBY. “So I wasn’t really hoping for a metal,’’ he says. So much for lobbying.

Explaining why there’s an influx of social advertising in India Balki says, ‘‘The problems are bigger and the budgets have really gone up.’’ But as far as taking a slicker slant, PSCs have a long way to go. ‘‘I don’t think PSCs have become slicker, but they’re more ambitious and more aggressive,’’ says Agnello Dias of Leo Burnett. Ambition, in some cases translates into seeking international acclaim.

Dias believes that PSCs have gained greater visibility and standing for cause has become ‘‘extremely fashionable all of sudden’’. In vogue or not, PSCs have served as a creative safety valve. ‘‘One can’t take liberties with brands, and there are fewer restrictions with PSCs,’’ offers Joshi.

The film category has also been unspooling socially relevant messages, though without the tenacity of print and outdoor, because of the high costs involved. ‘‘Print is definitely more challenging,’’ says Bhatt. His film on Child Sexual Abuse that made it to the Cannes worked on shock value, showing a father handing out birth control pills to his daughter. ‘‘This was subtle too, which made it all the more harder because subtlety and slickness that work in print usually fall flat with film,’’ he offers. Leo Burnett is another agency that has created critically acclaimed television campaigns for the National Association of the Blind and handles about four to five PSCs annually.

Shashi Sinha, Executive Director of FCB Ulka, an agency known for its pithy one-liners for Mumbai’s Traffic Control Board feels that social advertising has come a long way. ‘‘Agencies were previously looked down upon if they created public service messages,’’ he says. Today this is a sacred space.