 "Will Balki, Piyush and Prasoon unite this Goafest?")
Pandey's agency Ogilvy & Mather has stayed away from Goafest for three years now, while Joshi's agency McCann has skipped the annual ad fest for two years in a row. Lowe (now called Mullen Lowe), on the other hand, has abstained from the Abbies, the creative awards which are the high point of the Goafest, for over a decade.
Past attempts at convincing them haven't borne fruit. But sources in the know admit these attempts were half-baked, with Mullen Lowe's Balki never approached at all because he and his agency had abstained for so long. But Raj Nayak, president, Advertising Club Of Bombay, says the committee, which comprises members of both the Ad Club and Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), will reach out to the three again.
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"How can one have an advertising festival without the gods of advertising?," he asks. "There will be a sincere attempt to reach out to them to understand what are their grievances. If we can address their issues, then there is nothing like it. If despite our efforts, the issues are not resolved, we will have to leave it at that," Nayak says.
Goafest is organised jointly by the Ad Club of Bombay and the AAAI. The festival will be a three-day affair held between April 7 and April 9. Separate teams have been set up for different activities - sponsorships, registrations, speakers, content etc. "The earlier we start the better," Nayak, who is also CEO of general entertainment channel Colors, says. "It gives us time to prepare for an event such as Goafest, which is the only local advertising festival of its kind in the country," he says.
To ensure agencies show interest in participating in the 2016 edition, the Goafest committee is also talking to Donald Gunn, founder and co-author of the Gunn Report, to include the Abbies within it. The Gunn Report is regarded as a creative barometer with the global and local advertising industry. Creative people love being featured in it and work that has been feted at all major awards are included in the report.
The belief, say sources, is that in a world where ad agencies are part of international networks ensuring Abbies are part of the Gunn Report will push them to enter their work. "It will be an added incentive and something that will goad agencies to enter their best work," says a source.
The Goafest Committee as well as the Awards Governing Council (AGC), the central unit that monitors the Creative Abbies, has begun meeting ad agency representatives to figure out their interest in participating in the festival next year. Ramesh Narayan, chairman, AGC, says, "We are meeting national creative heads of 38 of the top agencies today to understand what they expect of us and the festival. The idea is to be as transparent and open as possible. This way there is no question of a misunderstanding," he adds.
Why the three big admen of India have stayed out of Goafest
The answer lies in the myriad controversies the Creative Abbies, which is the highpoint of Goafest, has found itself over the years. The three admen have at various points in time said that the Abbies have lost its shine and that issues pertaining to scam ads and plagiarism have become recurring and dominant themes. While Balki's grievance goes back over a decade when he swore off the Abbies saying that it wasn't credible enough, Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi's angst is more recent. The two men maintain that the Abbies no longer inspire or motivate their teams to enter work, given that it is a show meant for them. They point to the scandals that have rocked the awards show; the most recent being the Ford-Figo affair that rocked Goafest in 2013.
At that time, controversial ads featuring international celebrities for the brand Ford Figo were uploaded onto the net and subsequently entered in the Abbies. They were even shortlisted, only to be pulled out for being scam ads or ads created for the purpose of winning awards. Since then Pandey has gone on to launch an in-house awards show at Ogilvy called Envies, while Joshi has thought it wise to enter his agency's work in international award shows.