Goafest, started as a premier industry event, has lost its sheen over the years due to controversies, especially around the creative Abby awards. The three biggest creative agencies now shun the show. But Raj Nayak, newly elected President of the Ad Club, is optimistic about bringing them back. On December 15, he sought the media’s opinion to make Goafest 2016 a bigger, better, credible and more inclusive event. Here’s what Simran Sabherwal observed at the event
In December 2005, when Arvind Sharma was mandated the task to look after the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) Awards, he proposed “the idea of doing something new that creates discontinuous value for the industry”. This idea was the genesis of Goafest, the first edition of which was held on the Arossim beach, Goa in 2006. Much water has flown under the bridge since then, with the very credibility of the Abby awards being in question. In an attempt to turn around the situation, Raj Nayak, the newly elected President of the Ad Club, invited the media to get their viewpoint on various issues that have plagued Goafest over the years and what could be done to address them. Nayak, who is the CEO of Colors, had with him MG Parameswaran, President, AAAI and Executive Director, FCB Ulka, Nakul Chopra, Chairman, Goafest Organizing Committee & South Asia CEO & VP, Publicis and Ramesh Narayan, Chairman, Awards Governing Council, and founder, Canco Advertising.
At the end of a heated discussion, the issues that came up were the absence of top creative agencies including the Big Three - Lowe Lintas, McCann Worldgroup and Ogilvy & Mather India, and what must be done to bring them back on board so that Goafest is truly an inclusive industry event. The no-show of these agencies has undoubtedly impacted the creative Abbys. Ogilvy & Mather India, has in fact created its own internal awards, ‘The ENVIES’ (after Lowe Lintas, with its internal awards called ‘The True Show’). Talking to IMPACT in an earlier conversation, Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director for Ogilvy & Mather India and South Asia, had blamed it on “basic frustration with the normal awards system in the country and the way it is handled”. R Balki has also expressed his view on Goafest and Abbys saying, “I do believe in credible award shows, but the basis of their integrity has always been questionable.” In addition, in 2013, controversy erupted over scam ads and plagiarized ads. In 2010, then Ad Club Bombay President Bhaskar Das received allegations that jury members were voting for advertisements produced by their own agencies, which is not allowed by the rules.
In this background, the organizing committee has a tough task on hand convincing not just Pandey and Balki, but also Prasoon Joshi and the heads of other agencies who have opted out of Goafest. Nayak says the organizing committee for this year’s Goafest will leave no stone unturned to ensure that: “Nobody would be happier than the team here to have Prasoon, Piyush and Balki as part of Goafest 2016. We would be reaching out to them to listen to them, to see what their grievances are and if they can be addressed, we will definitely try and address them. Hopefully, I see no reason why they won’t be a part of Goafest this year.” The AAAI and Ad Club have already started reaching out to people at an early stage. “The intent this year is to make Goafest more inclusive, credible, bigger, better and to get the complete participation of the whole industry. The fact that we are speaking to you five months before the event tells you that we are gearing up to go for the big kill,” adds Nayak.
Addressing the absence of agencies, Ramesh Narayan clarifies, “Many people say that many of the agencies weren’t there last year. It is not that many of the agencies were not there last year, a few of the agencies were not there. It is important to actually go and meet them to know why they were not there. Once we know and if it is some kind of a process issue, those things could be easily addressed by us.” Despite this optimism, it will be a tough task for the organizers to convince the agencies to re-impose their faith in Goafest. However, what could give them a chance is the persuasive skills of Raj Nayak.
To tackle scam ads and plagiarism, measures have been put in place to address these issues, in line with the processes at international award shows. The entire shortlist will be put up in the public domain for at least eight days and will be heavily publicized to ensure that people see it and raise their objections at that stage. Even after a particular piece of work has won an award, the work will again be verified with the advertiser before a metal is handed out at Goafest. Says Chopra, “The system we have is to actually reach out to the industry because there can be no better system than that, as long as it is publicly viewed and everybody gets a chance to see it. That’s the best check you can have in place. A suggestion has been made that we should amplify this fact more, so this year we will even consider running ads closer to those dates, telling the industry that the shortlist is going to go up and please look at it and if you have any reason to believe that these ads are scam ads or plagiarized, then write in to us.”
On the fact that the absence of large agencies has seen smaller agencies make an impact, Chopra says, “The highest number of entries we have ever received was last year. If you look at the trend, the number of lesser known agencies winning an award has increased. This tells you about the level playing field.” He also adds that some agencies have come to a thought process that they will only participate if they are going to be a dominant winner and in this case, nothing can be done by the organizing committee.
An important fact is that marketers and client participation at Goafest has been considerably less when compared to the Effies. However, an effort is being made this year to change that. Says Parameswaran, “Traditionally we have not seen clients coming to Goafest. The first year itself, we started a marketing wizard concept and invited young product managers, brand managers to come in from the client side, this will continue. We have also some interesting, innovative ideas this year to make sure that we have at least 20 to 30 senior marketing professionals attend the show.” Reiterates Nayak , “There has been no focus on client participation in the past, but we realize that it is very important as they are part of the same ecosystem. This time, there will be a concentrated effort to bring in as many clients as possible to Goa.”
The issue of speakers also came up for a heated debate, with many from the media fraternity pointing out that the speaker line-up did not meet expectations last year. While admitting that the speaker list of Goafest 2014 was not up to the mark (partly due to the shifting of dates of GoaFest on account of the General Elections,) Chopra says he received positive feedback on the speakers this year and that going forward, a concerted effort is being made to bring in a wide range of speakers not just from the industry but also from associated creative industries. Speaking on this, Parameswaran says, “We have been trying to improve the quality of speakers over the last few years. We have sought inputs from the industry on the kind of speakers they want. We have broad-based the kind of speakers we invited over the last two years – they are not just from advertising but also people from leadership positions, spiritual, authors, the film industry… We hope to increase the palette of speakers we have on offer and hopefully by the time we unveil the full speaker list, it will be a mix of both fabulous speakers and some very interesting topics that they will talk about.”
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
