What could have been better?

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Last year in 2007 when I went to Goafest I wasn’t sure if we would be able to give the same performance. But accolades to Jagdeep Bakshi and Madhukar Kamath, and others for the increase in scale. It was not only bigger and better—it was far better organised in terms of logistics and the quality of international speakers. Personally I felt very good as some mainstream creative work got awarded. The grand prix winners were real good heavy stuff like Nike. Also, the merger with Abby gave out a positive feeling. Although a few agencies stayed away from the awards but we got physical participation from those agencies. So it was more inclusive in that sense. It was a feeling that we’ve chewed a lot more.

From the media standpoint we had far less awards than the creatives. Wherein media had around 29 awards and creatives had more than 270 awards. But the quality of media work was extremely good. The creatives maybe have won some awards for mainstream work however a lot of work that got awarded was not ‘mainstream’.

There were a number of sub-categories created in creative awards. But I am most proud about the fact and it is a real high for me that all the awards in media were mainstream work—for example, the Vodafone roadblock campaign, the Amul Voice of India sponsorship and Reebok integration in the Hindi movie Goal. All three of them are gold winners. Second biggest thing was unlike creative agencies all media agencies participated in the awards. The number of media entries also went up this year from 200 to about 472.

What could have been better? I thought the controversy was needless over the leak of the news of the awards to the publication. It basically took away the fun. I feel that instead of blaming the publication we should blame the individual who leaked it out. It is extremely unfair that somebody did this to fulfill personal motivation. Because of this tempers got frayed. I think these individuals, do not belong to the industry. Although it is very difficult to find out who did it but I am sure time will tell.