Goafest 2017: Media and Publisher Abbys nominees speak

As the 12th edition of Goafest kicks off today, the Media and Publisher Abbys take place tonight. exchange4media spoke to some of the nominees for these categories.

M V Shreyams Kumar
Director - Marketing & Electronic Media, The Mathrubhumi Group

This year, Mathrubhumi has increased its nominations at the Abbys, across various categories. Our Yathra TV commercial is a unique creative piece, which was based on featuring a young woman who is bitten by the travel bug after reading about Jodhpur - The Blue City - in the magazine. The commercial highlights how she gets lost in the magic of travelling, through Yathra magazine. I am quite optimistic about its winning potential at the Abbys.

NOMINATED FOR: Publisher ABBY

Somnath Sengupta
National Creative Director, Kinetic

This year, we have around 20 nominations at Goafest, which include Media Abby, Promo/Activation, Design Abby, Creative Abby, and Mobile Abby. What is unique about our ideas is that all of them are based on technology. We don’t have a single nomination without the use of customized interactive technology and mobile. Our rainwater harvesting campaign for Vodafone has been nominated in multiple categories and we are hoping it wins. We are also banking on our Ford Mustang (Audrino technology) idea and Mukhota campaign.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

Basant Rathore
Sr VP, Strategy, Brand & Business Development, Jagran Prakashan

Of the total 73 shortlists announced for the Publisher Abbys, Dainik Jagran has got 43 nominations; 16 different campaigns of Jagran Prakashan have made it to the shortlist. It’s an honor to be appreciated by such a prestigious Jury. This gives us a lot of confidence going forward, and a great reaffirmation of our brand-building efforts. Massive effort has been put behind each of our campaigns and each of these 16 campaigns is special. I do hope that we’re able to maximize the wins. Apart from the spring in our stride, these wins will spur us on to dream big and come back stronger next year.

NOMINATED FOR: Publisher ABBY

Sujata Dwibedy
Executive Vice President, Carat India

This year, we have put in a lot of hard work behind our campaigns and we have had a couple of very good launches. The most important thing, however, is that all our entries this year have translated into sales and business uplift. For us, Madfie for Cadbury Dairy Milk was really special because it brought alive the whole campaign. It was a media first where for the first time we were linking social media to Outdoor. While Goafest is a little skewed towards creativity over the use of technology, I am sure judges will see the mettle of the campaign.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

Vaishali Verma
COO, Initiative

I am delighted to see the shortlists of Initiative in Media Abbys 2017. Awards are a great recognition of all our work done throughout the year, and they keep the team highly motivated. I am looking forward to a great innings at Goafest this year.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

Mitrajit Bhattacharya
President and Publisher, Chitralekha Group

Chitralekha has won six Abbys for its covers in the three editions of Publisher Abbys so far. We take great care in designing our magazine covers and it feels good when the hard work gets recognized at Goafest. This year too, we have three covers nominated. While the covers tackle very different subjects: pollution kills, new-age fraud, and growing crime in Rajkot, they all are expressive and hard-hitting. Hope we win some.

NOMINATED FOR: Publisher ABBY

Anand Chakravarthy
Managing Partner, Maxus India

Maxus has consistently performed well at Goafest across both the Media and Creative awards. This year as well, we have a number of entries across clients and offices, which is very heartening. We have some outstanding work across brands like Vodafone, Sonata, and Linkedin, to name a few and look forward to doing well at the awards. It’s good to see how there are increased entries and shortlists across multiple categories versus a time when traditional media had the maximum number always. It’s a reflection of the impact of multimedia and the fact that we continue to build expertise across consumer touch points.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

Kaacon Sethi
Chief Marketing Officer, DB Corp

We launched one of the largest integrated campaigns ‘Zidd Karo Duniya Badlo’ in 2016, a worthy paid -owned -earned - shared case study. This campaign has collected several metals both nationally and internationally and we are hoping for good results at the Abbys as well. We are proud to be nominated in the Publisher and Creative categories. Since we are very choosy about the work we enter and don't follow a volume game at the awards, the recognition of our work at prestigious platforms such as the Abbys at Goafest keeps us charged and motivated to be impactful and effective not only in communication content, look and feel, but also campaign ROIs.

NOMINATED FOR: PUBLISHER ABBY

Deepak Netram
Senior Vice President, Lodestar Universal

Goafest is one of the two most important awards we hold in media. It has a different assessment pattern compared to other awards, so there is a lot of importance that your basic idea and creativity gets. As for the nominations, I would not want to comment on a particular campaign because all your work is important, whether they are shortlisted or not. There is equal amount of effort and passion that goes behind every entry; it’s a little difficult to classify one against the other. Every year, we have been doing well across awards, so we are hoping the same happens this year too.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

Shekhar Banerjee
COO, Madison Media

We have shortlists not just in Digital and traditional media, but also a whopping number of shortlists in Digital creatives. Even the spectrum of work shortlisted is encouraging; while for bottom of the funnel consumers we have Nihar Angrezi Mobile Pathshala, at the same time we impacted the top end consumers in Delhi and shook them out of their stupor to stand for a cause with the Ezee Hugs campaign. From data science-led first-ever Hindi keyword based search campaign for Asian Paints to using Facebook Live and 360 VR to drive high ticket real estate sales for Godrej properties, we will have our fingers crossed and evenings sober for the dash to the stage.

NOMINATED FOR: MEDIA ABBY

(Compiled by Simran Sabherwal and Samarpita Banerjee)

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