GoaFest 2011, Day 2: Invest time and money on innovations and customer management

After a day full of insightful discussions on the first day through the Advertising Conclave. The second day was kick-started with the inauguration of the installation art-work done by 100 chosen young creative professionals on the theme- "Creativity with a conscience". At the inauguration ceremony Subhash Kamath, Managing Partner, BBH India, urged everybody to vote for the youngsters in abundance and encourage them. 

Followed by which the first of the knowledge seminars for the day was commenced with a renown speaker like Charlie Crowe, Founder, Festival of media. Crowe showed the audiences some amazing innovation in the digital and activation space and spoke of how all these innovations' core was the “consumer”. He also spoke of how consumers were getting more conscious of the brand and readily wanting to interact directly with a brand but in a more social-media environment. Crowe added, "There has been a decline in the number of consumers visiting branded sites, it is almost the death of traditional '.com' sites and consumers are more keenly joining branded social communities"

Post Crowe's insightful talk and some amazing video presentations, the center stage was taken up by Neeraj Nayar, President, Contagious Communications,  who pointed out key things that any agency should inculcate in its thinking and operations to be successful. The key elements being:

Think of Projects not campaigns

Think editorially

Be the change

Prioritise in -Artisanship and Authenticity

Lean out of the frame

Nayar also pointed out that it is very important for every organisation to allocate a 5% budget from its investment revenue for innovations every year.

Brian J Terkelsen, President, LiquidThread, Starcom Media Vest, was the next speaker . Sharing a few of LiquidThread's innovative work, Terkelsen said," It is very important for advertisers to understand that content drives motivation. Advertisers should look at creating awareness, raise brand favorability and lastly take adequate action. Clients should invest more money on innovations and back it up till the last stage of implementation."

Next up was Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Google India, who said, “By the end of 2010, of the 100 million Indians who were online, only 40% of the internet users were accessing internet from home. The online advertising industry was about 1000 crores and which is only 4% of the entire advertising pie in the country. However this year the online advertising spends will increase by 50%.”

He further added that display advertising has come of age and that Google has been trying to keep on innovating to improve display advertising. He pointed out that because of the company's continuous efforts display business for Google has grown by 92% in 2010.

While pointing out some of the key trends he said, “Mobile is going to be the number one screen soon and advertisers and content developers have to look at creating premium and interactive brand experiences for it. Re-marketing is going to be an important factor which will help understand a consumer's online usage patterns and advertise accordingly. Re-marketing also enable customising, which is an important factor to improve reach today.”

The last speaker for the day was Jake Baldridge, Account Management, Strawberry Frog. While presenting some of the case studies he said, “A brand can spark, lead, curate and sponsor a mass-movement. It is important to start with a brand purpose then tie it to an idea on the rise, find the cultural relevance and work from the inside out."

The knowledge seminars for the day ended with the insightful talks on how advertising agencies and clients have to spend more time understanding their consumers and give more time and money to innovations.