Agency of the year

I accepted the chairmanship of the search for the Agency of the Year with misgiving. First, I hate being chairman of anything. As the years trudge on I find I enjoy counting fireflies more and more and attending meetings less and less. Second, I felt in my bones that the advertising industry was not facing its best times so maybe people would not be in the mood for this type of activity. Third, I was in the throes of construction and study. This would cut into my thesis-writing time. I sensed this activity would not get the best of me.

At the same time, I knew it was time again to do so something for an industry that had sheltered and grown me. It also felt impossible to refuse the urging of Matek Gargantiel, then of Basic Advertising, March Ventosa of Hemisphere-Leo Burnett; Boy Pangilinan of Campaigns & Grey; and Vanne Tomada of the 4AsP (Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of the Philippines). They would not take no for an answer, offered, in fact, to do most of the work for me.

My first act as chairman was to attempt a postponement. I had an intuition that we would be facing a very bad business year. I thought it might be difficult to drum up enthusiasm for participation. I consulted with the folks who started this contest – Tom Banguis, Emily Abrera, Chiqui Lara, Tong Puno. The consensus was to go on with the contest. I was right to try to postpone it from a purely personal point of view. Just when the contest was supposed to be launched I became very ill and needed major surgery. That took me out of the running for a while. Thank God for Bobby Caballero of Caballero & Associates and Susan Dimacali of the 4AsP and McCann-Erickson, who made sure the launch went on without me.

Before general anaesthesia dimmed my failing memory, before nicotine withdrawal (decided to stop smoking after surgery) drew a haze over the world as I knew, this Management Committee did significant work. We revised contest rules to encourage participation from smaller agencies. Controversial as these moves were, they did succeed in increasing participation by 40 percent, mostly smaller agencies.

Let me describe how the contest works. There are nine categories, each handled by a committee led by a panel head. This year (as in years past) the categories are Creative, with Bobby Caballero as this year’s panel head. Management of Business is led by Ricki Arches of McCann-Erickson. Market Performance is headed by Chiqui Lara of Basic Advertising. The Media Committee is headed by Tong Puno of TBWA/Santiago, Mangada, Puno. The Research Committee is led by Randy Aquino of Jimenez D’Arcy. Industry Leadership is led by Miguel Ramos of Aspac Advertising and PR & Publicity by Bong Osorio of Campaigns & Grey. The Production House of the Year Committee, a traditional part of this contest, is headed by Micky Domingo of McCann-Erickson. My agency is J. Romero & Associates.

Panel/committee heads screen entries, invite judges and supervise judging. The chairman leads the Management Committee made up of the panel heads, raises funds for the contest (very hard this year) and constitutes the Board of Advisers, and advisory body that sits on top of the Management Committee. In the past the Board of Advisers was purely an advisory body with no power to reverse decisions made by the Management Committee. This year we deemed it wise to give the Board of Advisers power to reverse decisions made by the Management Committee, if necessary. Thus this year’s Board of Advisers is made up of the heavy dudes of advertising, Jayjay Calero, former chair of J. Walter Thompson; Greg Garcia, one of the former chairs of Hemisphere-Leo Burnett; and Jose "Totoy" Avellana, current chair of Avellana & Associates. Their collective industry knowledge and perspective are balanced and enlarged by Senator Loren Legarda’s experience in politics and media; Dean Lydia Echauz’s academic perspective from the De La Salle Graduate School of Business. The legal perspective is brought in by Juan G. Collas, chairman emeritus of Quisumbing Torres; and the auditing perspective by Greg Navarro, partner, Punongbayan & Araullo.

Committees, rules, regulations, titles! What is this activity really about? It came to me as I scanned the crowd at the lunch that preceded our judging sessions. This is one of the events that draws friends together, that brings to our heart’s attention cherished associated next to whom we have worked all these years. Today we judge as in the past we partied, sometimes flirted. Now and again we suffered and fought for an industry, a profession we shared through a great part of our lives. We are really a community of friends who gather time and again to observe and celebrate the rites and rituals that bind us. The Agency of the Year, now on its fourth year, is one of them. Later in the year, there will be the Ad Congress. These are the events and the ties that bind us. This is why we cannot refuse when asked to chair the industry’s activities.