MDI Gurgaon hosts marketing and advertising summit Advent

In recognition of this significant gap, MarQuity, the Marketing Club of Management Development Institute (Gurgaon), organised a three-day advertising and marketing summit Advent. With its plethora of seminars, advertising contests, quizzes and other events, Advent predominantly aimed to generate interest in advertising among B-School students.

The flagship event of Advent 2008 was the advertising workshop Adrena, conducted by Mr Parveen Ahluwalia, a consultant in the field of strategic brand management. The workshop was followed by a one-of-a-kind ad-designing contest, which pitted only the best team from each business school in a fiercely contested battle of creativity and insight with the team from MICA eventually emerging triumphant.

Another highlight of Advent was Adage, a talk series graced by some of the most prominent professionals from the area of advertising and marketing. Mr Santosh Desai, who joined as MD and CEO of Future Brands after a highly successful stint as President and CEO of McCann-Erickson, delivered a highly engaging speech on the nuances of advertising. Through a series of carefully selected commercials, he brought out the essence of advertising as appealing to people when they were people and not when they were conscious consumers.

Mr Jitender Dabas, Vice-President and Strategic Planning Director of JWT, spoke about the death of traditional advertising and the future of the advertising industry in the emerging national economy. Mr Dabas expressed concern over the sourcing of talent for the advertising industry but sounded optimistic of change especially with pay packages in the industry being hiked in the United States.

Mr Alok Marwaha, MD of Kloeckner Pentaplast India, related his experience of entrepreneurial marketing while establishing a Greenfield project for Renolit AG in Thailand.

Among other events to be held during Advent were Qriosity, the Blockbuster Connect Quiz, and GrafiTEE, the online t-shirt designing contest. Participation in Qriosity reached overwhelming proportions, with over 300 teams from 27 business schools across the country trying their luck at the jackpot. In addition, on-the-spot audio-based ad identification contests, brand tagline-related dumb charades and impromptu speech contests added to the flavour of the event.

With events that led to substantial learning without compromising on the fun element, says MDI. With attractive prizes worth Rs 70,000 sponsored by ICI Paints, Innocean and Myntra.com, Advent proved to be a success among Marketing enthusiasts.