GOAFEST: How the ‘dancing’ launch campaign was cracked and why it may land Sam Balsara a movie role!

Hiding it is tough, because it is the return of all that advertising folk love… declared the campaign tagline. And hide they didn’t, as they swayed to the tunes of rapper Badshah’s song ‘Jugnu’ in the launch video for Goafest 2022 that went viral - folks such as Rohit Ohri, Chairman and CEO, FCB Group India; Sam Balsara, Chairman, Madison World; Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia and President of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI); Jaideep Gandhi, Founder, Another Idea and Chairman, Goafest Organising Committee 2022 and Arvind Sharma, Chairman, Good Brands for a Healthy Life, whom we had hardly ever seen dancing earlier!

SAM BALSARA COULD ACT IN A MOVIE!

On doing the jig for the Goafest campaign, Sam Balsara said, “I must say I did not need much convincing to do the little jig I did for promoting Goafest. I got many comments, likes, bouquets, compliments after the video went viral, but the highlight was a call I received from my long-standing friend Kishen Premnarayen, who said Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan are coming together to produce a movie and have chosen you after seeing your video. Don’t say no! You will have a lot more fun in films than in advertising!”

Jaideep Gandhi said he was nervous in the beginning about dancing, but enjoyed it in the end. “I loved to see instant participation from mentors like Sam Balsara and Arvind Sharma. Thanks to Rohit Ohri for the wonderful idea and a flawless act. Thanks to the FCB India team for this new addition to Goafest!”

THE BRIEF: CELEBRATING RESILIENCE

“At FCB, we had a very clear brief – that Goafest is coming back after two years with a whole lot of anxiety about what is going to happen, and our aim is to celebrate the fact that as an industry, we have weathered the pandemic storm together. The whole big trend of celebrating creativity at Goafest has thus been expanded to celebrating our own resilience. The film is a surrogate for the ‘enjoyable’ quality of Goafest – encompassing the huge sense of joy that everyone including industry leaders are feeling, and cannot hide, thanks to the return of Goafest,” said Rohit Ohri. “Moumita Pal, who is one of our brightest young creatives, came up with the idea for this campaign.”

So the music track and a reference video were sent to people who shot their own videos and sent it to the FCB team to put together. “I came to office specially to record this jig… it was great fun… My assistant, who is also in this video, has become a celebrity thanks to it!” added Ohri. “We plan to have winners of awards, even judges and general participants at Goafest to do the jig and post the videos from there.”

STAR CREATOR OF THE CAMPAIGN

On how she came up with the idea of advertising industry leaders dancing for the campaign, Moumita Pal, Creative Director at FCB India, who has been at FCB for nearly five years, said, “We were doing the usual layouts, etc, and reels of how people are missing Goafest, when I asked myself ‘What is it that people do when they are really happy?’…the answer was a happy dance, which is just an impromptu jig, a mad dance... so I put together a reference video for the committee, taking random happy dance videos from all over… with the narrative that it is so difficult to hide your joy when you are truly happy, in this case about the return of Goafest after two years.” Pal has to her credit ads such as Uber’s new marketing campaign on affordable rides called ‘Bas Socho Aur Chal Pado’ as well as Vistara’s picturesque inflight safety video released in 2020.