By TARACHAND WANVARI
Indiantelevision.com Team

(1 April 2009 10:45 pm)

GOA: The global meltdown, which saw single digit growth for the advertising industry, seems to have touched the 4th edition of Goafest 2009, organised by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Advertising Club Bombay.

The 3rd edition in 2008 saw 3000 delegates registering as opposed to 2500 for this year until yesterday. Registrations were to close today (1 April).

“We have had around 2000-plus registrations till a couple of days back,” GoaFest 2009 chairman Covlin Harris told Indiantelevision.com. “We expect another 500-600 delegates to have registered over the last two days, and are keeping the online registrations open,” he added. Ironically, the theme for this year’s Goafest edition is ‘This is too Good a recession to waste’.

The festival will begin with an ‘industry conclave’ in which advertising and media professionals will debate issues and challenges facing the industry.

The Media Abby Awards will be presented on 3 April and the Creative Abby Awards on 4 April.

The year 2008 was the first year the Abby Awards took place in Goa. It was also for the first time that Ad Club Bombay and AAAI had come together to jointly host the awards.