What should be Dr. Sandeep Goyal’s agenda as AAAI President?

It is at a right juncture in the history of the Indian advertising world that Dr. Sandeep Goyal has got elected as the new president of AAAI. Congratulations to Dr. Sandeep Goyal and all the best for him to continue to uphold the stature of this organization as an apex body of the Advertising Agencies in India.

It is interesting to note that the new president has tremendous exposure to both sides of the industry, the client side and the agency side. With his years of experience on the client side and on the advertising agency side, I am sure he knows the tremendous pressure independent agencies face in today’s technology driven advertising world. If he could take initiatives to put forward suggestions to the Government of India on the urgent need of formulating clear cut laws on the extent of use of AI content in advertising, it would be a great help to the industry as a whole, both to clients and the agencies. If there is a clear law regarding the 'do's and don’ts’  which clients & agencies have to follow while using AI generated content, a lot of confusion regarding this issue will have a solution.

Another area where I personally feel that AAAI could interfere is in creating and nurturing new talents for the future ad world. Anyone who has worked in the advertising industry will vouch for the fact that if you have to work in this field just learning the marketing theory is not enough. You have to read, watch movies, know different languages, different cultures and almost know about everything happening around. A finishing school for students who come out from management / advertising schools where they also get industry exposure would bring about change in this regard. Even a talent pool curated by AAAI can be made available online for any advertising agency to recruit industry ready people. The biggest challenge that advertising companies face now is the dearth of talent. Though there are several courses on advertising & marketing conducted by several colleges all over India, it is a fact that students coming out of such courses are not industry ready. And the worst part is that unlike other industries we have no time to do trial and error with interns as we have almost zero tolerance by clients for mistakes made by us.

Last but not the least, if the new president can take steps to spread knowledge on the advertising laws among the clients and the advertising agencies, it would increase the stature of AAAI as an organization. Many clients don’t even know there exists a website for Advertising Standards Council of India, where consumers can complain against advertisements. For this the communication between AAAI, ad agencies and clients have to be improved. Every ad agency, whether small or big, north or south, should feel a part of AAAI and be assured that AAAI is there to support them. As I stated in the beginning of this article, I am sure Dr. Sandeep Goyal, with his tremendous exposure in various capacities on agency side and client side, would bring about a new fresh breath for the AAAI as an apex body of the ad world.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.