IAA World Congress scales new high

The 44^th IAA World Congress held in Kochi between 20th and 22nd February sailed into the record books as arguably the best attended marketing and communication event seen in recent times.

Says Srinivasan Swamy Chairman and World President International Advertising Association (IAA),"Throughout the planning stages we proclaimed that the brief we gave ourselves was simple. Make it the biggest, and make it the best. And looking back, the numbers seem to spell out a very strong signal. We had 2008 delegates with participation from 25 countries, drawn from every continent of the world. Apart from that we had 300 students and academia delegates. Media accounted for 300 representatives including correspondents, photographers and TV crew.

The grand total of people attending the event, excluding the events’ team, scaled an all-time high figure of 2600 participants. I can confidently say that IAA staged the biggest marcom event in the world. Delegates were unanimous that the giant event was conducted not just on a grant scale, but also very smoothly."

Adds World Congress Steering Committee Chairman Pradeep Guha, "The content in general, and specifically the curation of the theme, speakers and subjects, all came together in a manner which was greatly appreciated by one and all. People have repeatedly come up to me and said they marveled at the stature of the speakers and the depth of their speeches."

The IAA World Congress saw a spiritual Guru like Sri Sri Ravishankar, corporate giants like Paul Polman (HUL) and Marc Pritchard (P&G), a political leader like Dr. Shashi Tharoor, digital leaders like Simon Kahn (Google) and Mark D'Arcy (Facebook) an e-commerce leader Chris Tung (Alibaba), iconic brands like Amitabh Bachchan and Kajol Devgun, social reformers like Andre Agassi, Vijay Amritraj and Deepika Padukone share space with a total of over 35 speakers who held the audience captive over three days.

The entertainment included a typical Kerala theme, a star studded fashion show by Manish Malhotra and a glitzy party night, keeping the delegates in high spirits every night.