MUMBAI: An evening to cheer, an evening to learn. Yet again, the men in black reigned supreme at the ad industry's night out - Abby 2005 held at Hotel Tulip Star in Mumbai on 19 March 2005.

Men in Black - The winning team!
With a total of nine golds and 17 silvers, O&M's men in black garnered a total of 41 points making them the invincible agency of the year, yet again. Last year too, the agency hogged all the limelight at the awards.

Top Cats Mahesh & Milind from Everest
The boys at the top sure must be feeling lonely as their nearest competitors - Everest Integrated Communication and Rediffusion DYR managed to notch a tally of eight points each. Everest bagged two gold and three silvers and the sibling Rediffusion won one gold and six silvers.

Keeping in tune with the Abby style, 2005 was an event that was celebrated with equal grandeur and panache. Whether it was the ostentatious set or the very poised Manasi Scott - the host for the evening or the musical themed acts with a mix of advertising, drama and Bollywood; Abby 2005 was a ceremony that the ad frat will not forget in a bit.

The Bollywood flavour!
The highlight of the Abbys this year was no doubt the Bollywood hunk John Abraham, who started his career as a media planner. Apart from Abraham; Fardeen Khan, Dia Mirza and Celina Jaitely were also present from the film frat to give away awards to the admen.

 
 
O&M's excitement was palpable as they also bagged the prized 'Campaign of the Year' for Hutch as well as the best continuing campaign for Hutch (Gold) and Amaron Batteries (Silver).

The silver for the best campaign of the year was taken away by Everest for Tortoise Mosquito Coil.

The Creative Advertiser of the Year was bagged by none other than Hutch jointly with Pidilite Industries and deservedly so. Both, not surprisingly, O&M's clients!

Prasoon Joshi! Good going
McCann Erickson with two golds and one silver, Enterprise Nexus with three silvers and one gold and Ambience with three silvers and one gold jointly stood third in the awards race with a tally of five points each.

While talking to Indiantelevision.com, an elated O&M group president and national creative director Piyush Pandey said, "It is always great to be numero uno. There was a lot of competition but in a way we were competing against ourselves all the time."

The Ad Club this year went international as it invited entries from Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In the South Asian Countires, the best advertising campaign (Pakistan) went to Synergy advertising for Silk Soap. The advertising campaign of the year (Sri Lanka) gold and silver both went to Phoenix Ogilvy for UNHCR-SGBV and the visually handicapped ad respectively.

Also, this year saw a 40 per cent leap in entries that the ad club received vis-a-vis last year.

Prahlad - Where's the hat!
Two 'Distinctive Recognition Awards' this year were given to adman Panna Jain who also figures in the CAG hall of fame. His key message to the young creative minds seated there was, "Keep raising the bar and be better than the best." The second Distinctive Recognition Award was given to none other that the renowned adman and filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar for his invaluable contribution to the advertising industry.

Overall, by the looks of it, the 64 judges for this year’s awards had quite a tough task on their hands.