For years, every major advertising agency in India has been making pious noises about doing something for the industry. But perhaps the only one that has been putting its money where its mouth is is Mudra. First, by setting up MICA, its excellent advertising institute in Ahmedabad, and then by setting up Magindia, its advertising and marketing archives and library.

http://www.magindia.com is the online avatar of the latter.

The rationale for setting up Magindia is laudable. The Indian advertising industry is nearly 100 years old; its history and heritage (perhaps surprising to some) is one of the richest in the world. And yet it had no organised advertising library or archive. There was no resource for either the industry professionals, or for students of the subject. A couple of years ago, therefore, Mudra funded and set up Magindia, and it has evidently been doing great work since then: every day it apparently tracks and digitises hundreds of ads and adds them to its database. The archive today contains approximately 10,000 ads spanning the last 10 years.

Magindia.com, the online version of the archive, claims that not to mince words, "it is the only site in the world to bring together different types of agencies' creative work, whether ads (in radio, press, TV, outdoor or banner) mailers, packaging, designs, POPs, logos or symbols." It also claims that "search engines like Yahoo, Google, Lycos, and Excite have listed it at the top among online ad libraries in the world".

The hyperbole perhaps needs to be excused. The fact is that it is a very neat site, which obviously has a great objective. But let us just say is that it is currently very much 'Site Under Construction'. And, by the way, when I did a couple of searches on Google, Magindia.com didn't show up in any of the top-lines.

But I am being unnecessarily unkind, and I apologise for that.

The site aims to cover various areas that an advertising professional or student might be interested in: creative archives, marketing and advertising news, new product launches, events, a gallery of 'advertising legends', advertising quiz, advertising resources and links, etc.

There are, cleverly, two parts to the site: an open-to-everybody section, and a section that is open only to subscribers. The latter allows you, for a small annual fee, to refer to its database of ads in a very logical, user-friendly manner.

I tried looking for ads from the archive. When I asked for 'POPs, healthcare section, all brands, all years', for example, I was promptly offered nine items. Okay, fair enough. But when I asked for 'hoardings, butter, all brands, all years', I was offered only one item - very disappointing, when you consider that the Amul Butter hoarding campaign, dating back to the '60s, is ranked among the greatest Indian campaigns of all time.

The events section offered me an advertising training seminar coming up shortly, as well as - mystifyingly -- IM Tech 2001 (a machine tool exhibition) and OSEA 2000 (an offshore and marine technology conference in Singapore, promising 'flux cord arc welding demonstrations', among other things).

The resources section offered me links to various Indian ad agencies' sites. I clicked on Chaitra Leo Burnett - probably the only Top 10 agency with a site, by the way, and was promptly taken to the site of Quantum Link Communications, a Web design company.

The TV commercials I tried to watch didn't run particularly well, but then I didn't really expect them to.

But what was really terrific was the range of relevant advertising links that the site offered me. That page itself made the site worthwhile. If I was a copywriter, or art director, or whatever, I would definitely bookmark that page for my reference. (In fact, I'd say it is probably one of the two finest selections of advertising links I have ever come across - the other one being on the University of Texas, Austin, site).

I seem to recall that I was once offered the job of heading the Magindia archive, at the time it was being set up - one of the stranger job offers I have had. When I look at the kind of work it has done over the past couple of years, I realise how incompetent and inadequate I myself would have been for the job. But as for Magindia.com, uh, I guess I'll just wait until it gets out of its 'Site Under Construction' stage

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