Following a detour to Mumbai last year, Goafest is making its way back to its original home in Goa this year. Back this year with a new venue and a new concept of ‘Goafest Village’, the three-day festival is moving away from its usual format to offer more experiences to the industry, as per the organisers.

We caught up with Jaideep Gandhi, chairperson, Goafest organising committee and founder, Another Idea; Mohit Joshi, co-chair, Goafest organising committee and CEO, Havas Media Network India; and Prasanth Kumar, president, Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and CEO, GroupM, South Asia. 

“This time we have emphasised on experience a lot. While there is a format that's been going on for a very long time, this year we thought of breaking that. The first thing we did was change the venue to Cidade De Goa. We have introduced more entertaining stuff like Advertising Plays, where we have beach volleyball, a walkathon, and pickleball. We did this to keep people engaged because the regular formatted stuff has been done for a while. We wanted to create something a Cannes like experience, where different things are happening at different places. A very inclusive and active environment where everything is happening in parallel and people have different things that they can attend to. It's an overall experience that we are trying to give,” said Joshi. 

This year, the festival will mark the debut of ‘Advertising Plays’ - a sports and wellness IP. 

Shedding light on the new property, Joshi added, “Brands have been very positive in associating with it because it’s new and a very interesting property. More than that, delegates can take the best and leverage everything at the hotel. We have many interesting things, including Yoga by the Bay.”

Goafest turns 18 and the theme of this year is ‘Ignite ____.’

Detailing how the sessions are designed around the theme, Kumar explained, “This year we want to get the energy back in the industry, get new energy, and focus on multiple areas that we want to scale up. It's about igniting creativity, technology, enhancement, and skills. Ignite anything you want. So, it has got a flexibility element to it. That's exactly what one will see in the context of multiple subjects, discussions and conversations that will happen. It will not be just a unilateral conversation on one particular subject. It also comes along with a little bit more energetic experiences.”

With over 60 speakers, 35 sessions and 20 masterclasses, this year the festival is going to go beyond one ballroom and will provide multiple avenues for other experiences, as per Gandhi.

He voiced, “While planning the content strategy for Goafest, we wanted it to be exclusive, in terms of having a creative session or a media session. We will have sessions which will cover every part from media and clients, to creative and technology. Built around the pillars of inspiration, knowledge, education, celebration and entertainment, every year we increase one element to the festival, and this year we are adding sports. We have also collaborated with Earthday.org. Another interesting thing that we are doing this year is GoaFresh, where we are getting students from institutes including MICA, Miami Ad School, SIMC and Loyola College.”

Speakers for the event this year include 

Rishad Tobaccowala, Youri Guerassimov (Marcel), Prasoon Joshi (McCann), Amarjit Singh Batra (Spotify), Geetika Mehta (Nivea), Vikram Mehra (Saregama), Karan Bedi (Amazon MX Player), PG Aditiya (Talented), Tejas Apte (HUL), Ankit Desai (Marico), Shubhranshu Singh (Tata Motors), Rajeev Jain (DS Group), Ajay Kakar (Adani Group), Arjun Choudhary (Swiggy), Sanket Prakash Tulangekar (MMT), Pragya Bijalwan (Voltas), Kanika Anand (Airtel), Aruna Daryanani (Amazon MX Player), Darshana Shah (Aditya Birla Capital), Satya Raghavan (Google), Ajit Verghese (JioStar), Bobby Pawar, Sonal Dabral, Rathi Gangappa (Starcom), Rashmi Sehgal (Zenith), Lulu Raghwan (Landor), Rajdeepak Das (Publicis), Deepak Dhar (Banijay), Yash Chopra (Amazon MX Player), Biprorshee Das (WARC), Sujeet Kulkarni (Andersen), Karthi Marshan, Nisha Singhania (Infectious), Rubeena Singh, Shekhar Narayanaswami (Times Innovative), Sandeep Bommireddy (Adonmo) and Promita Saha (Karukrit).

Outside of advertising and marketing, the speakers also include Indian cricket team coach and World Cup winner Gautam Gambhir. Bollywood is represented by Kareena Kapoor Khan, Suniel Shetty, Jaideep Ahlawat, Vijay Varma, Vivek Anchalia, Luke Coutinho and Ram Madhvani.