The Advertising Club Madras conferred its Distinguished Service Award on Srinivasan K Swamy, Chairman and Managing Director, R K Swamy BBDO for his outstanding contribution to the advertising industry.
Presenting the award, N. Murali, Co-Chairman, Kasturi and Sons Limited, said, “Mr.Srinivasan, fondly known as Sundar, is someone who is truly worthy of this award.” Recalling old memories, Mr. Murali said that Mr. Srinivasan’s father R K Swamy, the doyen of advertising industry was given the first Distinguished Service award in 1994. “I had the opportunity to follow R K Swamy which is a hard act,” he said. Mr. Murali was conferred with this award in 1995. Other recipients of this award were V. Narayanan in 1998, S.R. (Mani) Aiyer in 2001 and C K Ranganathan in 2004.
“R.K. Swamy was the one who showed the way for public sector firms to advertise. Today companies like ONGC are huge advertisers because of the seeds sown by him,” Mr. Murali said.
In his acceptance speech, Mr. Srinivasan recalled his early days in the advertising industry and explained about his contributions to the sector. Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman, Cognizant India, lauded Mr. Srinivasan’s attitude towards life and called him a ‘tremendous person’. “He (Sundar) is a person who wants everyone to be happy,” he added.