It's champagne popping time at The Advertising Club Bombay. Come 21 August and the largest advertising club in the world is going to be partying all day long. With reason. You don't cross 50 every year!

The venue: The Hilton Towers in Mumbai. And steering the club in its golden jubilee year is the affable and softspoken president M.G. 'Ambi' Parameswaran who wears his hat well. Ambi is extremely sanguine about the club's contribution to the advertising industry. And he sees it morhphing further as it gears up for the challenges ahead in a new advertising paradigm.

Indiantelevision.com's Sonali Krishna, caught up with Ambi and spoke at length to him about the club's history, goals as well as the road ahead. And of course the celebrations that mark the momentous year.

Excerpts:

Congratulations on the Ad Club's completion of 50 years. What is on the agenda for the golden jubilee celebration? What acts have you planned and what is going to be unique about this celebration?
Let me pull back a bit. The Ad Club was founded 50 years ago as an advertising luncheon club, where advertising agencies and marketing companies met for lunch and there was a luncheon speaker. Over the last 50 years, the industry has emerged and the club has evolved from three martini lunches and parties to serious work.

The 50th year is significant as it is a watershed to mark the importance of The Ad Club and thank a lot of individuals who made it possible.

We also believe that the club will have to slowly keep changing its agenda as we go forward. One of the things we are kick-starting on the 21st is the training programme we are conducting for students which will highlight 50 different careers in advertising and we are publishing a book which will be released at the event called 50 careers in advertising. We have commissioned Anita Sharan to write it for us.

The second being Solus, which is an integral part of our existence. Bhaskar Das, who is the editor, is coming out with a 100-page bumper issue. Not only will it contain articles from the archives of Solus, it will also contain historical information about the club.

We've also organised a competition for students on "Why do I want to be in advertising." This competition will be judged on Saturday morning along with the workshop.

Also, we are conducting a competition among ad agencies to create advertising about advertising. We have about 200 entries for that. The winning agency will be awarded on Saturday.

Plus, we are fortunate as Anil Ambani has agreed to come and he will be our chief guest and as you know the Reliance group has shown tremendous commitment towards advertising in terms of setting up Mudra and more so in terms of setting up Asia's first management institute dedicated to advertising which is MICA.

How are the resources being organised for this mega event?
Fortunately the club doesn't need to go around looking for funds. But we have got a presenting co-sponsor Nirmal Lifestyle and a co-sponsor which is Dainik Jagran and hopefully we should be able to sell some passes and be able to break even.

It's been 50 years since inception? What significant contribution to the advertising fraternity can Ad Club, Mumbai boast of?
I would say that the Advertising Club has done a lot in terms of nudging people into professional standards in the industry. There are a lot of bodies in advertising. There is an AAAI, INS and now an IBF. All of these are industry bodies. Compared to that Ad Club is a body of professionals. The motto of the Club is to help raise professional standards of the industry. We do that in different ways:

1) We conduct training programmes. We do about 10-15 of them every year.

2) We reward excellence. So, I think we have been able to nudge professional standards in the industry by a wee bit over the last 50 years. We have also tried to change with the time and hence have remained relevant to the industry.

Could you expand on the evolution of the Ad Club and its standing today?
The Ad Club was founded in 1954 and the first ever meeting of the Club was held on 22 August. As many as 80 people attended that meeting and 68 ended up becoming members. And over the last 50 years, we have evolved from a club of about 60-80 members to over 2,000 members.

In terms of our evolution of our role, it started as a club for only advertising agencies. It evolved to include media, other associate bodies five years later. In fact, the president of the Ad Club, Mr Parmeshwar, who was running Readers Digest, was a media person. Ad Club, Bombay held the first creative awards ever in India. Our Ad Works seminar started in the 80's which is today called Effie's is only one of its kind in India. Emvies is probably the only one of its kind in Asia. So, we have done a lot of things that are unique and experimental like the 'Continued educational programme' which is a one-day and two-day workshops, I don't think any other advertising club runs it in India. Our website has the last 40 years of Solus available to you.

In the capacity of president, what are your long term and short term goals so as to take the club to a different level?
All I got onto to the managing committee about five years ago. Was secretary for two years and took over as president last year. So my term ends in June. One of our plans in the next six months is to move our ad club to a larger premises. We are joining hands with the Advertising Council of India and the INS and are looking for a much larger office space. This office space would perform as the advertising hub for Mumbai. So it will have training rooms, seminar rooms, a library, a video library and maybe even an online library facility for Advertising Club members. So this is one thrust that we will have.

The second is creating awareness about advertising in the student community which is to present it as an exciting career option. I think we need to attract better talent into advertising and try and help this talent grow. So, essentially that is the role which I think the Ad Club can play in a more meaningful manner in the months to come.

Has the awards led to creative excellence holistically as an industry? In the sense, has your creative awards led to elevating creativity in the industry or has the creativity just been restricted for awards purposes?
Okay, let's address it. This entire business of creating ads for awards is something that started in the Far East and then spread to India as well. Today, we are clear that we are putting certain stringent measures that the awards are given to ads that have actually run on media.

Having said that, there is a little bit of this happening around the world. Across the world ad agencies, encouraged by clients; in fact some clients are equally culpable in this who are very happy when ads done win awards but those ads never run in media.

So, there is no answer to that as such. We do try and put certain safeguards that ads are given to those that have actually run.

How does Ad Club Mumbai stand against the rest of the country?
Ad Club, Mumbai started 6 months after Kolkata but undoubtedly we are the largest. So, to that extent we have a pan-India footprint. And we try and involve and see the other ad clubs as associate bodies. We see ourselves as an advertising club of India based in Mumbai.