Goafest 2016: Sonal Dabral, Senthil Kumar, Tarun Katial among Jury Chairs

The Goafest Creative Abbys has announced the third set of jury for the coveted awards. The Awards Governing Council of Goafest 2016 has declared the Jury Chairs for Integrated, OOH/Ambient, Branded Content and Public Relations. Sonal Dabral, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, DDB Mudra will chair the OOH/Ambient Jury of Creative Abby, while Senthil Kumar, Chief Creative Officer, J. Walter Thompson, will chair the integrated category. Tarun Katial, Chief Executive Officer, Reliance Broadcast Network, will be jury chair for the Branded Content category, while Paresh Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer, Madison PR, will chair the Public Relations category.

Sonal Dabral has over two decades of experience in advertising industry and has curated many winning campaigns for major local, regional and multinational brands. He began his career in Lintas and after a brief stint in Mudra Delhi, went on to have an extremely successful stint at Ogilvy Mumbai. He then went on to head Ogilvy in Malaysia and make it one of the top creative offices in the region. Thereafter, as Chairman and ECD of Ogilvy Singapore, he helped the agency become the hottest agency in the region and the No.1 creative office of the WPP global network. In 2007, he led the agency to be the third highest awarded agency in the world at Cannes Lions. He is a prolific winner in most of the regional and international award shows like Cannes, Clio, D&AD, One Show, LIA, Andy Awards, AdFest, Spikes, etc.

Senthil Kumar has been celebrated in India and recognised globally for the ability to amplify deep local insights into simple ideas that solve complicated marketing challenges. He has won India’s first and second Film Gold Lions at the Cannes Lions International Festival in 2009. His ideas have helped build several brands in India, including: Levi’s, Nike, Google, Ford, etc. Kumar can be spotted in several Creative Books under the classifications of Writer, Creative Director, Designer, Photographer and Film Maker. His work has risen beyond successful marketing case studies to mine over 100 international creative awards.

Tarun Katial is at the helm of one of India’s youngest media houses and is considered to be one of the most successful executives in the Indian media industry. A stint in advertising, followed by over a decade of experience in broadcast with brands like Star and Sony and now Reliance Broadcast, Katial has successfully led high decibel launches of industry tent poles and has always been able to rightly tap the consumer’s pulse. Other significant achievements in his cap include being voted the NewsCorp Achiever for Asia and being included among the best in the ‘India Today 30 on 30’ list. He was also part of the team that won the first Media Gold at Cannes.

Paresh Chaudhry has over 24 years of brand communication and reputation management experience across industries and key global markets and is also founder President of the Indian Forum Of Corporate Communicators (IFCC). Chaudhry’s last assignment was as Group President - Corporate Communications, Reliance Industries, prior to which he was Head of Communications at HUL and Communications Leader, Unilever South Asia.  From building the Corporate Brand of Ranbaxy in North America, Europe and India, to aligning regional communication country teams to bring alive “the transition to one Unilever brand” and driving the corporate name change from ‘HLL’ to ‘HUL’, to putting together systems and processes for effective global (internal and external) communications at RIL, Chaudhry has led communications for many iconic and tentpole campaigns in India.

The next round of Goafest Abby Award 2016 Jury Chairs will be announced soon.

Presented by the Advertising Club and AAAI, the Goafest Abbys 2016 will once again see the entire advertising and marketing fraternity come together in Goa from April 7 to 9, 2016 at The Grand Hyatt, Bambolim, North Goa.