MAM
10th AdFest announces agenda, lines up 14 sessions
MUMBAI: With the 10th AdFest just around the corner, the Asia Pacific Advertising Festival president Jimmy Lam has announced the agenda for this year consisting of 14 speaker sessions. The festival will kick off on 14 March and culminate on 17 March at Peach, Royal Cliff Beach resort, Pattaya in Thailand.
“This is the laregst AdFest ever and I am delighted that we have been able to provide such a rich content for our delegates. This year’s speakers and topics are simply too good to be missed,” says Lam
Confirmed creative speakers at the event include David Droga speaking on how ‘The future isn’t what it used to be’, John Hunt will talk about how ‘If it ain’t got that swing, it don’t mean a thing’ and Benjamin Palmer giving advice on ‘Learning by doing’. Peter Souter valiantly tackles the unpredictable with ‘The future of advertising.’
This year, the AdFest has invited speakers to throw some light on consumer insights. David McCaughan runs McCann-Erickson’s Pulse survey. His topic is ‘Don’t call them consumers’. Daniela Krautsack’s from Mediacom Vienna will throw light on the influence of ambient media in ‘Cows in Jackets’.
The panel discussions that are popular at AdFest have been brought back and include Paul Kemp-Robertson from Contagious leading a panel discussion on “Brand Utility” with creative leaders from the Asia Pacific region. Lewis Blackwell advises delegates to ‘Look, don’t read”, and will lead a panel discussion with some of AdFest judges.
Japan Advertising Federation will share with delegates ‘The Practical Guide to Planet Japan’. Three speakers from Dentsu, Hakuhodo and ADK will be joined by moderator Chris Kyme, informs an official rekease.
Japan Association of Commercial Film will present its all time favourite ‘Remarkable Five’, introducing five young TVC directors from Japan, Philippines, New Zealand, Singapore and Bangladesh. Each budding director will present his or her short film based on the “Turning Ten” theme of AdFest 2007.
AdFest has invited festivals from other regions to showcase the best work. Among these, Daniel Marcet will present FIAP – the Latin American advertising festival with its winning ads. Jure Apih will present the award winners from Golden Drum – the new Europe advertising festival. Michael Conrad will talk about the mission of the first ever, InterContinental Advertising Cup to be held in Spain in November 2007.
Last but not least, Donald Gunn will release the Gunn Report for the year 2006 and reveal the tally of most awarded ads, the most awarded agencies, clients and countries.
Last but not least, Donald Gunn will release the Gunn Report for the year 2006 and reveal the tally of most awarded ads, the most awarded agencies, clients and countries.
Among the Indian representatives at the AdFest this year, Ogilvy & Mather India, Mumbai executive chairman and national creative director Piyush Pandey has been invited to preside over the Press Lotus category chairperson, he has also been roped in as a speaker on 16 March.
Leo Burnett India, Mumbai executive creative director Nitish Tiwari has been invited to join the judges panel for the Outdoor Lotus category, while McCann Erickson, Mumbai creative director Raghu Bhat will be on the panel of judges for the TV Lotus category.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
