Ogilvy's Portfolio Night 9 ' a life changer for many young Ad enthusiasts

An evening aimed to be a life changer in many young creatives' lives, the ninth edition of Portfolio night took place simultaneously world over on May 26th 2011. Hosted by Ogilvy, it took place at Westin, Goregaon in Mumbai for the second time in a row in India. The night witnessed one of its biggest turn out with eighty-one participants and twenty seven creative heads from across agencies. Last year only sixty seven participated with around twenty three creative directors.

Portfolio Night is an annual event where well known creative directors of the industry take a night out to review and value portfolios of students, juniors and aspirants of this creative industry. It is a perfect platform for young enthusiasts of the advertising world to meet highly renowned creative directors and obtain feedback on their work. Creative directors also get to scan the talent of the young generation that is entering the field today and give appropriate guidance to them.

The participants hailed from thirteen Indian cities, inclusive of Mumbai.

The event followed the same judging process as was done last year where the aspirants were divided into three batches and every aspirant had his/her portfolio reviewed by three creative directors.

Talking exclusively to Adgully, Abhijit Avasthi, Executive Creative Director, O&M said, "This is a platform which gives the young creative guys a great opportunity to show their work and get recognized at an early stage in their career. Usually the youngsters send mails to these creative directors and they never get any replies. So with this platform they can get immediate feedback and creative opinion on how they can improve their work."

Most of the creative directors to whom Adgully spoke to confessed that none of them saw brilliant work at Portfolio Night and that there is a need for more talent to enter this field.

Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder, Taproot India said, "Portfolio Night is a really good opportunity for youngsters to meet creative directors across agencies. It is hard to judge or say anything or for us to identify potential talent in just fifteen minutes."

He further added, "Out of six portfolios that I looked at, I really like one which was above average. And it was amazing because the participant's English and Hindi writing were equally powerful. However I didn't see any path breaking work unfortunately."

Vikram Shah, one of the participants told adgully that, Portfolio Night for him is a life changing experience. Shah said, "I really liked it and feel fortunate to have met some of the top notch creative directors in the industry. I was offered two jobs tonight and received many important feedback from the best creative directors in India which otherwise is virtually impossible."

Apart from Mumbai , Portfolio Night took place in twenty other cities across the world. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]