Kyoorius is about celebrating the best work: Rajesh Kejriwal
Known for design conferences and allied events, and a bi-monthly magazine, Rajesh Kejriwal, founder and CEO, Kyoorius hopped on to a territory that has had only one big player: the Abby organised by the Advertising Club. His idea appealed to a sizeable section of the industry. He pulled in Britain's famed D&AD to back his awards and provide the know-how in terms of jury processes. The outcome will be for us to see on Thursday, June 12 where 988 entries will vie for top honours. Excerpts from an interview with Pradyuman Maheshwari.
This should've possibly been our last question. But, tell me, if I am from the advertising business, why should I come for the Kyoorius Awards night on June 12?We're aiming it to be the biggest celebration of creativity in India ever. It's an area where you'll see a lot of interaction between industry people, meet-and-greet and with clients also. What we're curating is a very entertaining fun-filled evening. Not entertainment, but entertaining.You said "biggest ever celebration of creativity" implies you saying that your awards night will be better than the others...I'm not saying that I'm going to be better than the others. My aim is to make sure that I'm good. How others project themselves is a different story but you've to understand the difference. Kyoorius is one single awards night. The others have a much bigger conference plus multiple awards nights. There are different logistics that come into play in both. Both have their own space. For me, the focus is only the awards.Over the last few months, there have been many comparisons between Kyoorius and the Abby...First, I don't think we should compare the two. In India I think there's ample scope for two awards to co-exist as long as they are positioned differently. And my own personal perspective is that the Abby is a popular awards show and we're more in the mould of a critic's awards. The judging criteria, the trophy criteria are all very different. At Abby, there's a Gold, Bronze, Silver. For every entry, you typically aim to get one Gold, one Silver, One Bronze. Three awards. In our case it's different. We're celebrating the Best of the Best work which means we give a trophy to everybody who's done justice to a particular piece of work. This is the criteria that we've set at very high threshold levels. There are categories in which there are about 8 to 9 winners in our awards. There are categories in which there are no winners. So there's no demarcation that you have to award a maximum of three. And that I think is critical because at some point in time if you have 9 or 10 great pieces of work, how do you judge which one should get a gold, which one silver and which one a bronze? The jury decides. It's an experienced jury. Every great piece of work should be rewarded, not just three great pieces of work within the list of great works.Given the process of the judging, is there reason to be happier winning a Kyoorius award than any other?I'm not sure whether you should feel happy about winning at Kyoorius against something else because it's not one against the other. I think the key factor of winning at Kyoorius means our judging standards are very high...Are you happy with the way your relationship with D&AD has blossomed?Very happy. They've been great partners. They've supported us totally. Both of us are non-profit so we have no ulterior or commercial motive to do things differently or be non-credible. Whether we get 1000 or 5000 entries it doesn't matter. The revenue matters because the surplus goes back into the industry. We'll never lower our standards. We're not commercial. We have no political or commercial agenda.—By arrangement with MxMIndia.com