Mumbai: In addition to the keynote sessions and panel discussions, Day three of Goafest 2026 also featured a session on Resetting Bharat: Rewriting Growth Beyond Urban Playbooks by Rajiv Dubey, Vice President, Media & Marketing Activations, Dabur India.
“Communication today is hyper-personalised, mobile-first and increasingly driven by regional culture, as the gap between India and Bharat continues to reduce through smartphones, internet access and digital payments”.Dubey emphasised that consumers across metros, tier 2, and tier 3 cities now share similar aspirations, making behaviour and intent more important than geography in marketing.
“While AI, data, and deterministic targeting are becoming central to advertising strategy, he stressed that emotional storytelling, cultural understanding, and brand soul remain equally critical alongside scale and technology.” He highlighted how technology, regional culture, and hyper-personalisation are fundamentally reshaping modern advertising and consumer behaviour.
Following this was a session titled Rewiring the Mind: Why Fearless Creativity Wins by Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous, where he strongly emphasized that breakthrough creativity comes from conviction, risk-taking, and deep consumer understanding rather than safe, process-driven advertising.
“One of the biggest reasons bold ideas never get executed is because teams start second-guessing clients, bosses, and market reactions before the work is even made. Safe advertising may sustain brands, but extraordinary impact comes from taking risks and challenging category conventions”.
Khazanchi argued that digital media has reduced the cost of failure, allowing brands to experiment more freely, while truly strong creativity comes from understanding consumers, culture, and behaviour deeply, because strategy is ultimately an informed opinion, not an exact science.
Adding a lighter yet deeply insightful dimension to the day’s agenda was News18 Presents ‘Yeh Dhurandhar Zindagi – Resetting to Stay Relevant’ in association with Amar Ujala. The session featured veteran actor Rakesh Bedi, Bollywood Legend, in conversation with Anand Narasimhan, Managing Editor, Spl Projects & Senior Anchor, CNN News18. The engaging conversation reflected on longevity, reinvention, and staying culturally relevant across generations in an ever-evolving entertainment landscape.
Reflecting on the overall journey, Bedi emphasized, “Fame today spreads much faster because platforms and audience reach have evolved drastically compared to earlier times. Rakesh Bedi spoke about following his passion for acting despite preparing for engineering, saying life should be lived through risks, mistakes, and experiences rather than excessive caution. He shared that while performing any character, he tries to completely forget ‘Rakesh Bedi’ and deeply study human behaviour, emotions, and body language – because both actors and poets ultimately observe life before expressing it creatively.”
