Goafest: Setting new standards for the industry

“Goafest has gone to another level altogether. With the kind of energy which Goafest has brought in after two years, we are on the verge of something big and interesting,” say the organising committee members of the annual marquee event for the Indian advertising industry.

The press meet was attended by Partha Sinha, President, The Advertising Club, Ajay Kakar, CMO, Aditya Birla Capital, Jaideep Gandhi, Chairman, Goafest 2022 Organising Committee.

They said that they spent good two months to organise the three-day event which helps brands stay contemporary and reinvent themselves.

While commending the media for supporting the fest, they said that there will be no disappointment. “We owe it to the industry to have something which is a global standard. Now it's only one flat world as Friedman says; it's one large world. We can't have different standards now,” they said.

The organisers said that they have kept it very simple, since they had a very, tight timeline. “We have had the maximum participation in terms of agencies. There have been a few agencies who couldn't make it, but we've got many agencies who have come back louder. The overall numbers this year have been much higher. We had to package it in just one month that we had to do the whole thing. But what has managed is that we've kept it very straight and transparent. As of now, we've not had any questions or challenges, even our audited results that have come in overall, are, as of now very clean and straight. We've got verification, so we've not had any challenges. And we don't expect any because remember, even the jury chairs have been very strict,” said the office-bearers.

The jury comprises some of the best from the international ad industry. Three rounds of judging, first of all, are done online with the software and the platform. The jury comprises 62% of women.

What's new is the addition of new category of technology, apart from digital and mobile.

They informed that for judging, there won’t be any discrimination between participating and non-participating agency because we go for quality of jury. Everyone said that they want to be part of this. This is one industry award. It's incumbent upon the agencies to participate as much as for us to get them to participate is equally important.

They said they have raised the standard to an international level, because Indian standard is not very different from international. “Your context could be Indian, but your standard has to be global.”

Anupriya Acharya, Chief Executive Officer,Publicis Groupe, South Asia, said: “We all have worked very hard on this one. It is coming after two years. It was a very tough two years. We all know what are people and the industry and what everybody has gone through. So when we were curating the whole festival, the one part that we wanted to underline it with was the celebration. And that's why you saw how it started the way it started. And we were very happy. Because, when you plan all these things, at that point in time, it's still a plan. And, through the festival, as you would have seen in the schedules, we've tried to bring in everything that that has sort of to reflect the changing times that are there,” she said.

And the pandemic, of course, has accelerated and changed a lot of things, she added.

“So we are touching upon almost everything that we could think of. We have a record number of sponsorships. We are happy that we took the call back last year that we will do the festival.”

“In past we have seen you know many leaders have come like Sadguru and Ramdev, this year we have Raja Moulli representing the creative superpower,” said Jaideep Gandhi.

The whole conversation is around shaping the narrative on progressive gender portrayals in advertising and in media, they said. It is important, because, during the last two, three years, a lot of people joined the industry.

It is very important to ensure that through the festival, the organisers can touch upon all the very topics which are important for the industry. So that's how it has all been curated, they said. From an industry perspective, there has been a huge focus on the digital side, because with the the pandemic, e-commerce, e-payment, e-education, etc. have grown.