Goafest: Sidelights

VIRTUAL REALITY
Social media giant Facebook chose Goafest to give demos of Oculus, its virtual reality showpiece. The Palo Alto-based major had acquired Oculus for $2 billion a year ago. And those who experienced it here at the Grand Hyatt hotel realised precisely why Facebook paid top dollars for it. Oculus quite simply blows you away. Imagine a pair of goggles doing that to you. All you do is wear them and look at the screen in front of you. The moment you do that, you are no longer outside the frame, but inside it.

RUNNING WITH BRANDS
Alan Moseley, president and chief creative officer of 180 Amsterdam, a creative hotshop, who was speaking at Goafest, has a simple work ethic: You don't walk, but run with brands. Moseley demonstrated this with an example: His team actually ran with members of the research and consumer unit of a shoe manufacturer simply to understand the characteristics of its running shoe, the brand they were tasked with relaunching. This exercise actually helped 180 come up with cutting edge that made the product stand out in the clutter. Quite clearly no good work can come without passion, and if you have to run that extra mile, then so be it.

WHO'S THE HERMIT AND WHO'S THE 'HOUSEHOLDER'?
Mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik, whose session God as Brand, saw Goafest revellers leave the sun and sand for some time, had interesting posers thrown at him. Sample this: "Why is it that the householder Narendra Modi behaves like a hermit, while the hermit Rahul Gandhi behaves like a householder?" The ever-gracious Pattnaik politely said, "One has his wife chasing him, not him chasing his wife, and the other one appears to be confused whether he wishes to be a householder or a hermit."

CREATIVE CROWD GETS BIGGER
Unlike last year when creative agency professionals practically abandoned Goafest, this year they have marked their presence in a small, significant way. Prasoon Joshi, chairman, McCann Worldgroup, Asia Pacific, was here on day two as part of a felicitation ceremony for receiving the Padma Shri earlier this year. He declined comment on why his agency stayed out of the Creative Abbies. Also spotted were Satbir Singh, chief creative officer, FCB Ulka, Bobby Pawar, director & chief creative officer, Publicis, South Asia, Ashish Chakravarty, national creative director, Contract, Manish Bhatt, founder-director, Scarecrow Communications and Rohit Ohri, executive chairman, Dentsu India and CEO Dentsu APAC.