Balam Pichkari and other Goafest lessons

Our industry suffers from the big D — delusion. Sometimes I have been wondering if I should write a letter to many of our industry leaders to tell them that they suffer from delusion. These are not this writer’s words but that of film maker Karan Johar.

When Johar said this to a packed house at Goafest 2016, there were some in the front rows of the audience who exchanged knowing glances with their neighbours, probably a tacit admission that advertising suffers from the same syndrome.

Only that advertising could probably be worse off than Bollywood on the delusion score. You never hear of top film stars boycotting film awards shows year after year.

But some top agencies stay away from Goafest’s Abby awards for years together, and the run-up to the awards is always about the “will they come back this year” question. However, the same set of agencies never gave the Effies a miss. It’s no coincidence that the Effies is organised by pretty much the same set of people who put Goafest together.

The reason for this is not too difficult to guess — clients come in as jury members at the Effies and every agency in the business wants to make its presence felt in front of the clients.

Does that give a good enough reason to the organisers to get more and more clients involved in Goafest? Or do ad people think they are the best suited to judge their own creative prowess? The answer is a no-brainer.

The other big complaint or delusion about Goafest 2016 is that the youngsters are not interested in the proceedings.

But a casual conversation with youngsters who were first-timers at Goafest this year shows that the festival does not get a positive word-of-mouth from the seniors in the business. It’s the ones who have been there, who discourage the ones who are keen to go. “Why do you want to go? You will be bored,” one of the youngsters was told by her agency seniors. Nevertheless, she made it to Goafest because she wanted to see it for herself and decide. And what was the verdict?

As if to prove the naysayers wrong, the youngsters at Goafest 2016 were a powerhouse of energy. On the last day of the Creative Abby Awards, the youngsters from DDB Mudra set the house on fire with a dance that made the stage performance look rather pale in comparison. When the song Balam Pichkari was being sung on stage, the entire front row of the audience got up from their seats to look at the action in the middle rows. Backstage took an all new meaning.

The energy levels at the ballroom prompted the DDB Mudra group’s chairman and CCO Sonal Dabral to remark, “If there was an Abby for the most enthusiastic agency team, the Grand Prix would have certainly gone to DDB Mudra.”

That brings us to the other big miss at this year’s Goafest, the elusive Grand Prix award. Across categories in both the media and creative awards, the Grand Prix was not awarded to a single entry at Goafest.

To be sure there were nearly 4,100 entries, a 25 per cent jump over the previous year. The number of gold metals given out was also much lower than the previous years.

The official response was that the jurors have raised the standards for handing out the awards. However, take this as a parting thought. The jury have been doing duty only a month or two leading to Goafest 2016. For the earlier part of the year, they had been doing their day jobs heading the creative functions at mid-to-senior levels in their respective agencies. If they had raised the bar in their day jobs, would we have seen more golds and the Grand Prix at Goafest? Did Karan Johar realise that he was to hit two birds with a stone.