The second session of Day 3 at GoaFest 2009 saw George Michaelides, Global Leader (Invention) at Mindshare, conduct a session in which he stressed on the ‘new creativity’, which, according to him, was the need of the hour for advertising agencies.

Michaelides explained that advertising had always been seen as one aspect of marketing communications, but now it needed to broaden its definition. “It’s not about advertising. Rather, it is about generating talkability for your brands,” he said, adding, “If that approach is adopted, it will act as an acid test of new creativity.”

Elaborating further, he said, “The new creativity has to be the language of the business in the future.”

Referring to the contemporary marketing arena, he said that the connectivity from one person to the other was resulting in mass awareness, typically like a viral on the Internet. A classic example of this would be thousands of people sharing information and at the same time disseminating it as well, be it on the web or any other platform.

On the opportunities in India, Michaelides said, “India has been a country that offers great opportunities, and the history suggests that. Creativity, too, is seen to be rising here. With diverse cultures, it becomes challenging to addresses marketing problems. Also, there is a certain amount of chaos, where the rich people live side by side with the poor.”

He further said, “I think India is at that kind of point where there are young people who understand technology, and out of all this buzz, there are new things that come.”