Every year, GoaFest is organised to put some light on the latest trending advertising techniques that brands are following to share insights on the positives and negatives. The 13th edition of GoaFest was very promising and we have tried to share some of the important points that can be concluded from this 3-day event.

Changes from previous years

This year a lot of changes were seen in GoaFest with new categories of awards and participation of agencies who are relatively new in the advertising world. The absence of some big names did hurt the event but it was overcome with other things.

Along with advertising, the focus was other elements such as music, Bollywood, sports, There is a lot less of advertising and increase in other elements like music, sports, glamour, and politics, that have a huge impact for making advertising successful.

Conversations with business & advertising world personalities

1. Baba Ramdev

The involvement of popular personalities such as Baba Ramdev helped the event a lot as he is seen as a natural performer and knows how to connect with the audience. The sense of humour he carries in his speeches does help the listeners to learn the difficult lessons of the business world in an easy way. His 90-minute lecture engaged audience with his knowledge and vision towards Made-in-India and ‘HUM MNC KO DHO DALENGEY’ campaigns. He shared some valuable lessons on branding which can be read here.

Dean Donaldson and Jonathan Tavis

Dean Donaldson and Jonathan Tavis of Kaleidoko presented their thoughts in an interactive way and talked about digitalisation and the concepts of Geo-targeting, Geno-segmenting and Geno-marketing. They shared the ways of making the most in business using target audience.

3. Rapha Vasconcellos

Rapha Vasconcellos of Facebook CreativeShop said about following the 70-20-10 principle using interactive and immersive content for any idea, building communities, experimenting and doing things differently.

Non-advertising personalities

Inviting people out of the advertising world does bring a sense of freshness. Let’s have a look at what these personalities said during the festival:

1. Jonty Rhodes

Jonty Rhodes is known for his fielding skills that he showed during his international career. He is loved by the people of India and Anand Narasimhan of Times asked him some questions on the latest Australian Sandpaper incident. Jonty was very open and said that most teams try to change the ball conditions within the acceptable behaviour but the way Australians did was an act of stupidity.

2. Sparsh Shah

The 14-year old guy on wheelchair made the audience emotional and gave reasons for people to smile in this competitive world.

3. Sania Mirza

Another sports legend who is followed by people across the world shared her thoughts on what made her achieve success in life. She was to the point in this session and made the audience to have trust in themselves while trying new things in their campaigns.

Many other personalities participated this festival and gave their thoughts about what works in today’s world.

Awards

Award function during the GoaFest festival was very well organised and the Master Jury came up with great decisions on announcing the winners of different categories in the advertising industry of India.

A total of 245 metals were given away this year including 43 Gold awards, 83 Silver awards and 118 Bronze awards.

Dentsu Webchutney won a total of 3 Gold awards. Adfactors PR, FCBIndia Group, Godrej Group and Value 360 Communications won 2 Golds each. Kinetic Advertising, Cheil India, Famous Innovations, Madison BMB, Star India, pi Communications, Zee Cinema – Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Open Strategy & Design Grey Worldwide, MSL India, and Out of the Box won a Gold each.

If we look at the number-of-metals standpoints, the top three organisations of 2018 in the Abby list are: The Social Street (34), Dentsu Webchutney (23) and Early Man Film (17).
Early Man Film won the Grand Prix award for Reforest India’s ‘The Story of Kaveri’ campaign.

Workshops

Workshops by Facebook and Mindscapes were arranged at Goafest which helped the participants to know about the latest technologies that can impact the advertising.