The Hindu Business Line : Goafest to host Abbies for next five years

Chennai, April 15 What years of talks, negotiations and meetings probably could not achieve, the beaches and spirit of Goa has managed to — bring the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Abby awards of the Ad Club Bombay onto one platform. Flush with the success of the Goafest 2008, where the Ad Club’s Abby awards were given away to winners from the ad industry across categories, the first time away from the city of Mumbai, both the industry bodies intend to sign a memorandum of understanding, to do the Abby awards at Goafest together for five years.

As Mr Jagdip Bakshi, Chairman, Goafest 2008 and CEO of Contract Advertising, told Business Line, “The memorandum will delineate responsibilities — for instance the Ad Club would look at gathering the award entries, supervise the judging, make the trophies — essentially all responsibilities related to the creative awards. AAAI, as it did this year, will be responsible for the entire festival — the logistics, the infrastructure, inviting speakers, and constantly looking to improve the product. Essentially leveraging our strengths, both bodies doing what they are best at doing.”

The other significant takeaway from the Goafest, Mr Bakshi explained, is groom a CEO for the ad industry akin to the software’s industry Nasscom, which a senior industry person heads. “I truly believe that there should be a CEO for the industry whose singular job is to promote the interest of the industry – an equivalent of Kiran Karnik. Goafest would be the highlight of the advertising calendar – but he/she would work all through the year to resolve issues facing the industry. That is what Nasscom did and it certainly got it right. This will be an AAAI committee decision. I have proposed it, and the intent is already there,” elaborated Mr Bakshi.

Next year’s Goafest, he said, would also undergo some format changes. The intent is to add on a day and other dimensions of communication. “We’ve added media. Now we must add on design. Currently, there are very good design companies in the country such as Ray & Keshavan and Lintas D Cell. So we’re looking at a three-day festival — where the conclave can be on the morning of day one, and get straight into the design festival first after the inaugural. Design awards on the first evening, media awards on night two and creative awards as the finale,” said Mr Bakshi.

Commenting on the talk that the entries for some of the top work were “scam ads”, Mr Bakshi said that learning from experience, the organisers are going to tighten the rules from the next year. As he explained, “There will be a form that the client must sign in such a manner that the mandatory fields in it cannot be ignored – like what date was this ad released? Where was it released? Did you authorise it? What did it cost you? Have you paid the agency? These would be mandatory fields which the client has fill to sign – rather than leaving it vague and making it the obligation of the organiser to find out.”

Ad Club Bombay and AAAI, he said, are going to sit together and work out what the output of the result is going to be, so that it is not subject to interpretation. “We didn’t get it right this year. But we will sort this out. This is a priority area for both Ad Club and us,” he emphasised.