Goafest 2023 gets bigger and better with more award winners, delegates

This year, Goafest is bigger and better with more metal winners, over 2,000+ delegate registrations and 54 sponsors. 

But one big change that everyone will witness this year during the award ceremony is that Silver Abby winners will not be called onto the stage to receive the awards. 

Explaining the reason behind this change in the award ceremony, Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India and Chairman, The ABBYs Award Governing Council, said, “Because there are more metals and a lot of celebration around the kind of work we have, to not make the show long, we will not have Silver winners coming on the stage to receive metals.” 

Partha Sinha, President, Times of India Group and President of The Advertising Club, added, “It’s a hard decision. We have enough metals this year and it’s not that we won’t be celebrating much. We took this decision because the crowd thins down as the night proceeds”.

Seconding Sinha and Barua’s thoughts, Prasanth Kumar, President, the Advertising Agencies Association of India and CEO, South Asia, GroupM, commented, “It’s not that we are taking away the recognition of Silver and Bronze Abby winners. Even every shortlist is a winning story. For many years now, Bronze winners never came on stage to take the awards and as a crowd, we got used to it. It had to go this way at one point because this is a global norm whether it’s One Show or Cannes Lions.”

Barua also said that one might debate about the increased number of metals, but it is only the natural outcome of the increased number of categories. 

The number of entries received from the creative agencies last year was 2007, this year’s tally stands at 2282, this is in addition to the media agencies which sent 1014 entries last year, as opposed to this year’s 1019 entries, taking the number of total entries to 3301 this year, up from last year’s 3021 entries.

The agency participation has also increased on a YoY basis as 63 media agencies have participated in The Abby One Show Awards 2023 as opposed to 54 last year. Similarly, the number of creative agencies participating in the awards has also gone up from 142 to 181 this year.

After a hiatus of many years, this time around, Mullen Lowe Lintas, Wunderman Thompson and McCann Worldgroup too have entered their work in Abbys 2023. 

Last year, 1600 people attended the award versus this year’s 2000+ delegates. 

While the number of delegates has increased by 400 this year, Kumar pointed out the composition of the attendees and said, “This year, we will see a lot more marketers joining Goafest. We have a lot more representation from different agencies. Representation from the tech and entertainment industry has also increased. In total, we as an industry have only widened.” 

Goafest 2023 will have 11 masterclasses with 17 speakers, 15 sessions and 6-panel discussions with 50+ speakers over three days on a variety of topics such as video optimisation, storytelling, brand advocacy, etc

“All masterclasses are packed. We had to request some speakers to do one more masterclass on day 3,” added Jaideep Gandhi, Chairman, Goafest 2023 Organising Committee.

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