The final awards night at Goafest 2012 saw Ogilvy India at top by winning 51 metals including 1 Grand Prix, 11 Gold, 16 Silver and 23 Bronze. Ogilvy won the Grand Prix in Digital & Interactive category while it bagged maximum 4 Gold in Direct category, 2 Gold in Digital and 1 Gold each in Film, Radio, OOH, Print, and Design categories.
Ogilvy India won 7 medals for its campaign ‘The Photographs Case’ for Fox Crime including 1 Grand Prix, 5 Gold and 1 Silver. Good Morning Films won a Silver for Fox Crime’s campaign in Film Craft Category in the Subcategory Cinematography. Thus, the campaign emerged as the most awarded campaign with total 8 metals.
Taproot India won 14 medals for its campaigns for The Times of India. TOI remained most awarded brand bagging 20 medals followed by Volkswagen India with 10 medals.
The second most awarded campaign was Airtel’s ‘Har Friend Zaroori Hai’ which won 7 medals including 2 Gold, 4 Silver and 1 Bronze.
Leo Burnett took 35 metals home with 3 Gold, 11 Silver and 21 Bronze while DDB Mudra remained at No. 4 with 32 metals including 2 Gold, 13 Silver and 17 Bronze. Another independent agency Creativeland Aisa was awarded the Grand Prix along with 1 Gold and 5 Silver metals. Creativeland Asia picked Grand Prix for Audi A8L 3D Experience in Integrated category.
This year, total 332 Creative Abby’s were given out of 907 shortlisted entries in 12 categories while there were over 4,250 entries received from across India and South Asian countries. There were 2 Grand Prix, 34 Gold, 117 Silver and 179 Bronze metals awarded to 61 companies.
This year, Goafest did not announce any Agency of the year or Campaign of the year award.
Overall medal tally:
| Agency | Grand Prix | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Sub-total |
| Ogilvy India | 1 | 11 | 16 | 23 | 51 |
| Taproot India | 6 | 13 | 15 | 34 | |
| Leo Burnett | 3 | 11 | 21 | 35 | |
| DDB Mudra | 2 | 13 | 17 | 32 | |
| Creativeland Asia | 1 | 1 | 5 | 7 | |
| Grey India | 1 | 6 | 10 | 17 | |
| BBDO India | 1 | 4 | 8 | 13 | |
| JWT India | 1 | 3 | 12 | 16 | |
| Nirvana Films | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | |
| Jack In the Box Worldwide | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Phoenix Ogilvy ,Sri Lanka | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Sapient Nitro India | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Studio Eeksaurus Productions | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Apostrophe Films | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| XOX Design (A Division of The Flagship Advertising) | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ramesh Deo Production | 1 | 1 | |||
| Contract Advertising | 5 | 7 | 12 | ||
| ideas@work | 3 | 4 | 7 | ||
| Maxus India | 3 | 4 | 7 | ||
| Out Of The Box | 3 | 2 | 5 | ||
| Alok Nanda and Company | 2 | 4 | 6 | ||
| BBH | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Nomad Films Ltd. | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Amol Jadhav Photography | 2 | 2 | |||
| Grant McCann Erickson | 2 | 2 | |||
| Footcandles Film | 1 | 7 | 8 | ||
| TBWA \ India | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||
| Leo Burnett Solutions INC | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Lingo India | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Draftfcb Ulka | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Webchutney | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Interface Business Solutions | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Asylum Film | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Good Morning | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| M&C Saatchi-i | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| The Flagship Advertising | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Gopal M S | 1 | 1 | |||
| Equinox Films | 1 | 1 | |||
| Deelip Khomane | 1 | 1 | |||
| Cheil India | 1 | 1 | |||
| Indigo Consulting | 1 | 1 | |||
| Purple Vishnu Production House | 1 | 1 | |||
| AgencyDigi Communications | 3 | 3 | |||
| Meridian Communications | 2 | 2 | |||
| 30 Seconds of Fame | 2 | 2 | |||
| Happy | 2 | 2 | |||
| Hello Robot Productions | 2 | 2 | |||
| Wunderman International | 1 | 1 | |||
| BC Web Wise | 1 | 1 | |||
| Beehive Communication | 1 | 1 | |||
| Corcoise Films | 1 | 1 | |||
| Crocodile Films | 1 | 1 | |||
| Curious | 1 | 1 | |||
| Digitas India | 1 | 1 | |||
| Eleven Brandworks | 1 | 1 | |||
| Future East Film | 1 | 1 | |||
| Group M – Dialogue Factory | 1 | 1 | |||
| Metal Communication | 1 | 1 | |||
| Publicis Communications | 1 | 1 | |||
| Publicis Solutions (Leo Burnett – Sri – Lanka) | 1 | 1 | |||
| Rediffusion Young & Rubicam | 1 | 1 | |||
| Total | 2 | 34 | 117 | 179 | 332 |
Economists point out that the government has not announced any credible plan to curb expenditure, especially outgo on account of subsidies.
“This provides a trigger for the government to step up its reform process, particularly in subsidy management,” said Rao of Yes Bank. “Post the announcement, there was a knee-jerk reaction in the currency market, with the rupee falling around 20 paise.”
The rupee closed at 52.54 to the dollar against 52.68 on Tuesday, after hitting an intraday low of 52.75 after S&P cut the ratings outlook. The benchmark equity index, the Sensex, recouped losses following the outlook downgrade, ending 0.33% down at 17,151.29 points.
The revised outlook will “affect the international lending rates for India and the cost of borrowing from overseas would get expensive”, said Abhishek Goenka, chief executive of India Forex Advisors Pvt. Ltd. “The international funding for ECB (external commercial borrowing), FCCB (foreign currency convertible bonds) will also get affected, which will ultimately affect Indian GDP.”
Given the current political gridlock, S&P expects only modest progress in fiscal and public sector reforms, including the reduction of fuel and fertilizer subsidies, introduction of the goods and services tax, and easing of restrictions on foreign direct investment in various sectors such as banking, insurance and retail. “The ratings could stabilize again if the government implements initiatives to reduce structural fiscal deficits and to improve its investment climate,” S&P’s Ogawa said.
Though the interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could help in the growth momentum, the government needs to complement the central bank’s actions, he added.
With RBI having to balance between managing inflation and the government’s borrowing programme, the government needs to take steps to correct structural issues in inflation, Ogawa said.
Ratings agency Moody’s Corp. and Fitch Ratings Inc. have a Baa3 rating and BBB- rating, respectively, for India, both just one notch above non-investment grade. Moody’s issued a stable outlook for India in December.
S&P also lowered the outlook for a number of banks and public sector firms, including State Bank of India (SBI), Steel Authority of India Ltd, Indian Railway Finance Corp. Ltd and NTPC Ltd, to negative from stable. It did the same for India’s top technology firms as well— Infosys Ltd, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd.
“This action is not warranted as the fundamentals of Indian economy are stronger compared with other countries in Europe. Hence, we do not think this is a right decision from S&P’s side,” said Brinda Jagirdar, head of economic research at SBI. “Our medium-term perspective is that India is quite well placed in terms of potential growth. Going forward, I don’t think this revision in outlook calls for any downgrade in the economy.”
By cutting rates, “RBI has taken the first step to address the issues of growth and inflation. Now it is the time for the government to take action by addressing supply-side concerns,” she said.
Nitin Jain, managing director and co-head (fixed income) at Nomura India, said the outlook change will not have any major impact on domestic or international markets. “The issues that S&P has highlighted are already known to the market and everything has been priced in. I won’t overplay the implications of this outlook downgrade,” he said.
remya.n@livemint.com
Dinesh Unnikrishnan, Joel Rebello and Aveek Datta in Mumbai, and PTI and Reuters contributed to this story.