It?s a triumphant advertising fraternity that?s coming together to celebrate creativity at the Utorda Beach in Goa next month at Goafest 2010. After surviving a tumultuous 2009 when the slowdown affected the advertising industry?s fortunes and thereby the annual festival, the well-known and the not-so-well-known names of the ad world are looking forward to let their hair down as well as brainstorm on fresh ideas. That perhaps explains the choice of theme for Goafest 2010??Survival of the Freshest?.

The Goafest, organised jointly by the Advertising Agencies Association in India (AAAI) and the Advertising Club of Bombay (ACB) since 2006, has survived many a storm to reach where it is now. Since its inception, it has been dogged by controversies. Over the past two years, there have been allegations of scam ads especially in the print category of the creative Abbys leading to some of the biggest agencies including Lowe Lintas India preferring to keep away from the award shows. In its earlier avatar too, when AAAI and ACB (whose centerpiece was the Abbys award) held two separate events, several agencies had felt that Abbys? judging process was flawed and had boycotted the event, preferring to take part in AAAI?s event.

But much sand has blown over the Goan beaches since then! Today, Goafest has been successful in establishing itself as the country?s largest advertising festival despite all these challenges. ?Unlike international advertising festivals like the Cannes Lions or Cleo Awards, which are organised by private companies and not the advertising industry of the respective countries, Goafest symbolizes the coming together of the entire industry and jointly organising it. That?s the biggest achievement of the festival,? says, Shashi Sinha, CEO of media agency Lodestar Universal.

Concurs Suman Srivastava, CEO of marketing and communications agency Euro RSCG, who is also a member of the organising commitee. ?We have been approached by many media companies who have offered to buy the Goafest licence in lieu of a hefty fee. But the moment we do that the festival will become extremely expensive. Also, we would like it to remain a festival by the industry, for the industry.?

Srivastava adds, ?The festival has acquired a permanent place in the Indian calendar. Internationally as well, people have heard about it and want to come here. Even ad agencies plan their lives around Goafest. There are a couple of sponsors who have extended their support every year and have now become permanent. So in many ways it has become ?the? festival for Indian advertising.?

In 2009, the festival was scaled down substantially due to the global economic slowdown. While the number of delegates was down by 30% in comparison to 2008, there was a marginal high in the number of award entries. With a budget that was 20% smaller than 2008, Goafest in 2009 was kicked off with around 2200 delegates and 4891 entries for the creative and media Abbys.

However, this year with a budget of around Rs 5-6 crore, the three-day Goafest that starts on April 8 is expected to have 5200 entries and 2500 delegates. With its emphasis on the ?Survival of the Freshest? theme, the festival aims to recognise and applaud those who dared to be different in the challenging year that has gone by, representing the current sentiment of the marketers and advertisers who are actively looking for ideas to rise above the ordinary.

?We are all coming out of a bad year. As we go forward I think it?s going to be even more important and it is going to be about ideas and only the freshest will survive. There will be no space for mediocrity,? says Srivastava. ?So it is about celebrating freshest of ideas which will surve even in a bad economy.?

Every year Goafest begins with the industry conclave and this year media agency Madison World?s chairman Sam Balsara is chairing it.

?After growing at nearly 20% year-on-year for 5 years, the advertising market dipped in 2009 by as much as 10%. It?s time to grow now and make up for lost time with sharp strategies and plans to develop brand, markets, creativity, media markets and research. So this year at the conclave CEOs will introspect, debate, define and arrive at plans to achieve scorching growth rates,? he says.

In 2009, some of the doyens of the international advertising world including Sir John Hegarty of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH); Dan Weiden of Wieden+Kennedy and Jean Marie Dru of TBWA had attended the festival. For this year, ?we are in the process of finalising the topics for the seminars,? says Srivastava.

As of now, the list of international speakers includes Richard Pinder, chief operating officer, Publicis Worldwide; Jan Leth, vice-chairman, global digital, Ogilvy; Tim Mellors, chief creative officer, Grey Worldwide; Andrew Greenaway, regional creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore; and George Michaelides, global invention leader, MindShare.

But by far the biggest attraction of the festival are the two award ceremonies?media and creative Abbys?that are held on the second and the third day respectively. Besides the high interest level, every year new controversies surface around these two award shows, especially around the creative Abbys, and this year too is no different. Agencies such as Lowe Lintas are not submitting any entries for the competitive awards, content with just sending a delegation to the festival.

Says Charles Cadell, CEO, Lowe Lintas, ?We believe Goafest is flawed in that a significant amount of the work contributed, judged and sometimes awarded is not real work for real clients?it is scam.?

However Colvyn Harris, CEO, JWT, who is the Goafest chairman, has a different take on this. ?The issues are non-issue in my mind. If you look at Cannes Lions, many agencies don?t enter,? he says.

Interestingly, ad agency McCann Erickson is not sending entries this year reportedly because the agency feels it doesn?t have any good work.

In 2008, names of some of the winners of the creative awards had been leaked out a day before the actual announcement. Last year, Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and national creative director, Ogilvy & Mather India, had an argument with the Goafest committee soon after the announcement of the Grand Prix award. Last year JWT was the only agency that won the Grand Prix for the BCCL Teach India campaign.

Again, the creative awards do not include ?Agency of the Year? honour, an issue which has left many agen-cies unhappy. ?This year as well we will send a substantial number of entries,? says Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director, Ogilvy & Mather. ?However, we are constantly debating internally as well and would like to have a clearer stance on which award is the highest honour. Is it the Grand Prix or the Agency of the Year??

In answer, Ajay Chandwani, director, Percept Ltd, who is the jury chairman of Creative Abbys, has this to say, ?Grand Prix is the highest hon-our in a particular category. It is not similar to that of the Agency of the Year award which we do not have.?

This year the organizers have added a new zing to the creative Abbys by adding a number of new categories reflecting changing trends in advertising. New sub-categories like branded content, online video, rich media, websites by type-of-product, use of social media, WAP sites, applications for mobile, games, and integrated experience of new media have been added. It also includes extension of in-direct marketing and direct response categories to print, TV, and radio. Expansion of the design category includes retail design and use of typography. The print craft category will now include copywriting and art direction sub-categories. And the film craft category will now include production design.

The creative Abby Awards have gone beyond honouring the creative directors of advertising agencies, by widening its scope to include direct and CRM companies, interactive and digital companies, design houses, film producers and directors, commercial photographers, radio production houses, illustrators, animators and flash studio artists.

?Following the feedback that we have received from creative heads of various agencies and also the jury chairpersons we decided to include these categories this year. Our constant endeavour is to follow the latest trends in international festivals like Cannes, One Show, Spykes and other,? says Chandwani.

In comparison, the media Abbys have never faced any such heat. Shashi Sinha says, ?The entire judging process for the media awards is extremely transparent. And so the room for controversy is less. So to that extent we have very fortunate.?

But these are not the only challenges that the festival is facing today. ?We don?t have enough clients participating at Goafest. One of the primary reasons for that is infrastructure. We just don?t have enough number of hotel rooms in Goa to make the festival bigger. The ad village can host as many as 5000 people and that?s not a problem but where will these people stay?? says Sinha. He says that the Goa government should come forward to facilitate the infrastructure. ?Every year we have to reconstruct the venue from scratch and demolish it again. And that is very expensive. We need support from the government to make a venue like Pragati Maidan in Delhi where you can just go and have a festival.?

But the organisers are not discouraged by the setbacks and believe that it has the potential to become the biggest advertising festival in Asia. Already, the organizing committee wants to make it a 5- or 7-day festival similar to that of Cannes Lions. Controversies notwithstanding.