The capital city of India is all set to host this year’s edition of AdAsia, one of the biggest marketing, advertising and media conferences in the continent. Back in India after a gap of eight years, the four-day event to be held from October 31 to November 3 will see around 45 speakers from across the globe participating in 20 sessions that will explore the business ecosystem and understand the nature of disruption. The list of speakers includes Indra K Nooyi, chairman and CEO, PepsiCo; David Droga, founder and creative chairman of independent ad agency Droga5; Joseph V. Tripodi, executive vice-president and chief marketing and commercial officer, Coca-Cola; Koichi Yamamoto, general manager, global solutions center, Dentsu Inc.; Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy & Mather, among others.
The theme of AdAsia 2011 is “Uncertainty: The New Certainty”. The event is being organised under the aegis of the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA). Madhukar Kamath, group CEO and managing director, Mudra Group and chairman, AdAsia 2011 said, “With unprecedented tectonic changes impacting the way one does business, AdAsia 2011 is a platform which not only chronicles the changes, but also provides a glimpse of what opportunities and challenges await us. This is especially relevant as 2011 sees the world ? after having weathered the financial tsunami ? emerging from the effects of the global meltdown. Moreover, with Asia broadly, and India specifically, leading this global recovery, the centre of gravity is changing. If, in the 20th century, the world looked at the West for innovation and progress, in the 21st century, everyone?s attention is on Asia.”
In 2003, AdAsia was held in Jaipur and the theme was ‘Break the rules’. The theme was decided seeing how change is the only constant, and those organisations that have been able to understand discontinuity are best prepared to be the future leaders. A lot has changed in advertising, media and marketing since then. Today Asia is seen as the only hope with markets in the US and Europe are on the verge of a slowdown.
According to KV Sridhar, national creative director, Leo Burnett, knowledge sharing platforms are gaining importance today when most of the agencies are saddled with work round the year. “Our schedules are so packed and often we do not know what’s to be done with our training budget. So we make it a point to send our teams to attend knowledge seminars like Ad Asia and others. What has worked for market leaders in certain situations may not work for the audience at all. But the main objective here is to see the people behind powerful ideas and be inspired,” he says. He also feels that the idea of ‘ambition’ is now associated more with Asia than the US or Europe. “Global networks are now making more margins from offices in this region. Unfortunately, there is more cost-cutting than investment in these markets which may effect the quality of the creative product,” he adds.
Agreeing with Sridhar, Dentsu India Group’s executive chairman Rohit Ohri says, “I believe that knowledge sharing platforms like Ad Asia are invaluable for marketeers and communication companies to comprehend and navigate through the complexity of this market. Responding to an e-mail query from the Dentsu headquarters in Tokyo, Ohri explains how the importance of the Indian market has never hit him as strongly as it has in the last few days. “For most of our clients, Asia and specially India has emerged as a ‘must win’ market. India is experiencing what Japan did in the eighties. How do brands thrive in hyper competitive markets? How do brands engage the increasingly time-poor and disloyal consumer? We’re going to leverage our knowledge and experience of this phase of market development in India. Our vision of being the most innovative integrated communications agency has driven our enormous success in Japan.?
In 1958, Japan played host to the ‘The First Asian Advertising Conference’. The event was conceived by a group of leaders of the Japanese advertising industry with a view to establish a common forum for developing the advertising and marketing skills of the people in the region. The success of the first conference laid the foundation for the event to grow into an important regular gathering of marketing and advertising professionals in Asia.