Terence D’Costa is a very dear friend and a top-notch creative in the Himalayas.

HIGH RESOLUTIONS

Let’s play a game. I quote the resolution. You figure who it’s for. That way we can all go home having said, read and resolved what we conveniently didn’t. Happy New Year. No fingers pointed. No collateral damage. No kidding. Everyone okay with that ? Sweet. Now, let’s kick some donkey.

I promise to remember that my advertising agency is not my pet chinchilla. I promise to remember that even though it isn’t my pet chinchilla, it still needs to be adequately watered and fed. Chinchillas can’t survive on peanuts. Let alone tidbits per mensem or decimalised annual commission pills. I promise not to bark at my pet chinchillas — they react by playing dead. I promise not to play cat and mouse with them either — they’re allergic to cats. I promise to treat my pet chinchillas like the astute professionals they are, especially because I want to see them doing the magnificent hoopla and generating that precious word of mouse. Mouth, right.
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Terence D’Costa is a very dear friend and a top-notch creative in the Himalayas.

ART AND SOUL

Wonder what happens to unborn souls. The souls of the living that experience death without ever being graced by birth. Where do these souls go when someone decides to dump them? Are they meant to be forgotten? Or recycled into new embryos that may or may not see the light of day? I speak for the soul of the unborn idea. The idea that deserved to be but wasn’t. For in the Cimmerian crannies of the advertising world, there are so many.

Every time we react to a brief with a barrage of interesting ideas and scrap all but the very best, I’m sure we’re guilty of at least some degree of foeticide. But that doesn’t hurt a bit for supply seems endless. We don’t think twice when we smother them. Zygotic ideas are just too infinitesimal value-wise. They aren’t quite worth agency time. The ones that really are, are the ones that make better business sense. The ones worth fleshing out. These are the zygotes we build upon to create the little embryos that make it to the presentation. All curled up, ready and tingling to be born. Each genetically empowered with the potential for glory. Waiting to be invested upon or assigned to oblivion. But their fate isn’t always left to the gods. We’re so adept at making sure only the best is born, we deliberately murder the also-rans in broad daylight – in the client’s presence – as honourable sacrifices for the truly outstanding idea. These are the unborn souls I speak for today. You know them just as well as I do. Where do they go?
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