MUMBAI, July 5: After coming into his own nearly 13 years ago in 1983, for Ramesh Narayan, the newly appointed President of the Advertising Club, Mumbai, this is only the beginning. Narayan, who is also the managing director of Canco Advertising Pvt Ltd, has firmed up big plans for Ad Club.

The new Ad Club chief's plans include bridging the gap of knowledge at the entry level of aspiring ad professionals about the industry, by conducting seminars, workshops aimed to promote awareness. About the massive retrenchments carried out by agencies over the past two years, Narayan told `The Indian Express': ``I'm keen on extending support to unemployed ad professionals who are the unfortunate victims of the general slowdown in the economy for no fault of theirs.''

Regarding the recessionary situation in the ad industry, he said ``While 1995-96, was an exceptional year, 1996-97 was exceptionally poor. No benchmark ought to be done on two years which were alternately a crest and a trough. The bad economy merely reflected itself in various sectors.''

Candidly observing that the Finance Minister did not have anything to smile about for the ad industry in his budget, he quips that ``nothing has been done about the imposition of the 5 per cent service tax, the ad industry cannot act as tax collectors to the nation.''

He points out that the advertising fraternity has repeatedly appealed to the Finance Ministry in vain. ``The Ad Club can only highlight the problems and provide a platform for debate.''

Dismissing the growing trend of joint ventures in the Indian advertising scenario as natural, he admits that the phenomenon would adversely affect the smaller agencies. ``Smaller agencies who have no niche, if they are not creative hot shops or media buying firms, will find it difficult to survive.''

However, joint ventures are definitely not on Narayan's personal agenda. ``I'am not in favour of importing talent but would not mind exporting it,'' he said, adding, ``It helps to be a wholly Indian, medium-sized, creative ad agency.''