Only a fraction of AAAI time is on Goafest

Veteran adperson and current President MG Parameswaran tells Pradyuman Maheshwari that there is a lot more that the apex advertising body does, from disputes redress to skill development..

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The common perception, that AAAI is only about organising events like Goafest is wrong. Veteran adperson and current President MG Parameswaran tells Pradyuman Maheshwari that there is a lot more that the apex advertising body does, from disputes redress to skill development…
Most people know it, but for the benefit of a large number of our readers who don’t: what is role of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) as the apex association of ad agencies in the country?
AAAI is for the betterment of the advertising business. One avowed mission of AAAI is to improve professional standards in the industry, so we welcome anybody who is organising training, knowledge seminars and dissemination of information and knowledge to young people in the advertising industry. Whether it is Kyoorius, Afaqs, Exchange4media, Kulzy, MxM, Campaign India or IAA, all of them are welcome to provide affordable, valuable training for youngsters in advertising today. I’d say even older people in the industry need inputs; we don’t know everything.
AAAI was also set up to look at issues cropping up between advertisers and media owners, and resolve them. Do you think that the perception of AAAI, as the organiser of Goafest, has become bigger than the rest of its functions?
We do a lot of work which isn’t in the public domain, for obvious reasons -- client agency disputes, issues agencies are having with the media etc. Unfortunately, what comes into the public domain at regular intervals is Goafest, which is organised by us. A lot of youngsters in advertising believe our job is to only organise Goafest, which of course isn’t true. We have a managing committee that meets every month for at least three or four hours, and Goafest takes up less than 10% of our time. About 80-90 per cent of the time is spent on other issues, a number of which also get tabled.