Goafest begins in backdrop of Ford controversy

Springtime is upon us and so it is for advertising industry members who will make their annual trip to Goa, courtesy the adfest, which will be held jointly by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Advertising Club of Bombay. With each passing year, the Goafest, which kicks off tomorrow, is growing in size.

Consider this: Delegates who will make it to the three-day festival this year will cross the 3,000-mark, an increase of about 10-15 per cent over last year. There will be delegates from Pakistan and Sri Lanka, too, led by senior members of their respective ad industries.

The total number of entries in both creative and media segments has also gone up this year. In creative, for instance, the total number of entries stands at 4,300 against 4,200 last year. Media entries stand at 660, up from 628. In all, the total number of entries this season will be nearly 5,000, higher than the 4,800 entries Goafest saw in 2012, says Arvind Sharma, chairman, AAAI, who is also the chairman of the Indian sub-continent at ad agency Leo Burnett.

Besides, the number of agencies and companies entering their work in Goafest this year has crossed the 200-mark against 175 last year.

There will be notable absentees, too, including Ogilvy and Mather and Creativeland Asia, with the latter deciding only last week that it no longer wanted to be a part of the festival in protest against scam ads, a phenomenon where work is entered in the festival with the sole objective of winning awards. Such work normally has an innocuous release to ensure its entry into an advertising awards show. Goafest has routinely had scam ads surfacing with this year being no exception.

Ad agency JWT entered a poster campaign for Ford Figo, which was not released anywhere by the agency. The cat was only out of the bag when JWT made a public admission that the work was not authorised for release. The ads have been pulled out of the Creative Abbies, the award honouring excellence at the Goafest. It is easily the highpoint of the festival and the one which is keenly contested.

Says Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman, Creativeland Asia: "I took a stand on the issue of scam ads and hence decided to opt out. I am not against the Goafest or its organisers."

Abhijit Awasthi, Ogilvy's national creative director, meanwhile, says the Creative Abbies, which his agency had won 15 out of the 16 times the awards have been in existence, no longer inspired and motivated his team. "We are yet to take a call, though, on whether we propose to give the Creative Abbies a miss next year as well. We are exploring a few options to motivate our people at the local level. One of the options is to start our own internal awards."

If Ogilvy does decide to go the Lowe Lintas way of instituting its own internal awards, it could, say ad industry sources, be the end of the road for the Men in Black, who have been a constant fixture at the Creative Abbies for two decades now.

Despite all this, Goafest promises to be exciting this year with the competition between the agencies participating in the festival likely to heat up. Almost all big names such as Publicis, McCann, Rediffusion, Contract, JWT, Grey, Leo Burnett, DDB Mudra, Taproot and BBDO have thrown their hats in the ring.

But the clear favourite remains Taproot, which has worked for PepsiCo (Mountain Dew), Bharti Airtel and Bennett and Coleman. "We are hoping at least some of this work wins at Goafest this year," says Santosh Padhi, co-founder and chief creative officer of the agency.

Last year, Taproot was the runner-up at the Creative Abbies with six golds to winner Ogilvy's 11 golds. Overall, however, Taproot trailed Leo Burnett with 34 metals to the latter's 35, while Ogilvy walked away with 50 metals