Goafest 2010: Speakers for Industry Leadership Conclave announced

The industry leaders will debate on the topic '2010: Time to Grow' at the Conclave. Additionally, Sidharth Rao will chair the jury for Interactive Digital category

Sidharth Rao, CEO and co-founder of Webchutney will be the jury chairperson - interactive digital at the Creative Abby awards at Goafest 2010.

Last year, Bobby Pawar, chief creative officer, Mudra Group chaired the interactive digital category.

Commenting on the appointment, Ajay Chandwani, director, Percept and chairman, Creative Abbys at Goafest 2010 says, "Sidharth has been a pioneer in digital creative and an integral part of the Creative Abbys digital jury in the past. He will bring his knowledge of this space to this exciting new medium."

Rao opted out of regular academia at 19 and co-founded Webchutney. He has also been involved as an incubator with JuxtConsult, India's leading online research consultancy and Networkplay, an ad network.

With the evolution of digital creative, new sub-categories have been announced in the digital category at the Creative Abbys. These include the use of social media, branded content and gaming, online video and virals and WAP sites.

With this announcement, Goafest's jury chairman list is now complete. The chairpersons for Goafest 2010 are: KV Sridhar (print), Piyush Pandey (integrated), Agnello Dias (film), Bobby Pawar (out-of-home and ambient), Josy Paul (radio), Elsie Nanji (design), Ramesh Iyengar (direct), Prakash Varma (film craft) and Sidharth Rao (interactive digital).

Additionally, the speakers for the Industry Leadership Conclave at Goafest have also been announced. This year, industry leaders will debate on the topic, '2010: Time to Grow'.

According to a public statement issued by the Advertising Club Bombay (ACB) and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), despite the high growth-rate in the past five years, the advertising market is underdeveloped in India, as compared to many developed and developing countries. India contributes 17 per cent of the world's population; but comprises only 0.7 per cent of the world advertising market. The Conclave will discuss and debate on various issues that a developing market like India faces, and how creativity can help accelerate the growth of brands.

"After growing at nearly 20 per cent year-on-year for five years, the advertising market dipped in 2009 by as much as 10 per cent. It's time to grow now and make up for lost time, with sharp strategies and plans to develop brands, markets, creativity, media markets and research," says Sam Balsara, the chairman of the Industry Leadership Conclave, who terms the event as a "must-attend" for CEOs with growth and profit responsibility.

Tom Doctoroff, CEO - JWT, China and author of the bestseller, 'Billions' will start the Conclave. He will talk about what India can learn from China, on 'How to use advertising for growth and in turn how to grow the advertising market'.

The second session will discuss whether brands are growing fast enough for a developing market like India, and whether creativity has risen to a level where it can drive the growth of brands. The speakers for this session will include Piyush Mathur of Nielsen, Shiv Moulee of Millward Brown, Rajaram Narayan of Hindustan Unilever, Piyush Pandey of O&M and Arun Tadanki of Yahoo.

According to the Pitch-Madison Advertising Outlook 2009, the advertising pie fell about 10 per cent in 2009 from 2008, after growing by 100 per cent in the last four years. Speakers like Shashi Sinha of Lodestar Universal, Bhaskar Das of Times of India, Uday Shankar of STAR, Ronnie Screwvala of UTV, Minnie Menon of Bloomerberg UTV and Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff.com will ponder on media spends, and on whether the advertising pie could ever grow without a corresponding growth in the sales of products and services it promotes.

Srinivasan Swamy of RK Swamy BBDO, LK Gupta of LG and Shireesh Joshi of Airtel will present a case on building agency capabilities. The panel will discuss how advertisers could reap higher returns on advertising investment.

In another session, LV Krishnan of TAM, Ashok Das of Hansa Research and Mahmood Ahmed of ITC will talk about the role of market research in media and its importance.

Goafest, the prestigious national advertising awards festival, organised by AAAI, in association with the ACB, will commence on April 8.