MAM
Vinay Rao joins as Langoor’s head- client success
Mumbai: The digital marketing agency Langoor has appointed Vinay Rao as its head of client success. He will lead strategizing and digital transformation on key accounts.
Vinay will help brands achieve their goals by bringing the focus back on business and enabling strategies that help them create a prominent presence in new markets. He will be the driving force behind a brand’s storytelling to build credibility, promote awareness and engineer conversion with clients.
Welcoming him on board, Langoor CEO Venugopal Ganganna said, “At Langoor, we are always scaling up and adding new clients to our roster. To ensure that our clients receive all the support and advice they need and to help their business grow, we decided to onboard Vinay. He is very driven and has innovative ideas and effortless communication skills that he brings to the table which is crucial for our business. Vinay’s vision for Langoor aligns perfectly with ours, making him the ideal match for the role.”
Speaking on his appointment, Langoor head (client success) Vinay Rao said “I am thrilled to work with a firm as dynamic, creative and motivated as Langoor. The environment in the firm is very exciting and it’s an opportunity which couldn’t have knocked at my door at a better time such as now. Venu is a great leader and I look forward to working with him and giving our customers all the support that they need to grow and prosper.”
In his last role, Vinay was responsible for the digital marketing & communications mandate for Blume Ventures, one of India’s top-tier venture capital firms. He has also previously worked on the digital transformation mandates of early stage, challenger, and digitally native brands in ITES & SaaS, E-commerce, FMCG, healthcare, fitness and wellness, home interiors, retail, real estate, non-profit, airline, electronics and consumer goods.
AD Agencies
The Advertising Club adds new categories to Creative Abby 2026
Awards expand global focus; entries open until 6 April
MUMBAI: The Advertising Club has unveiled a fresh set of categories for Creative Abby 2026, sharpening the awards’ global edge while keeping creativity firmly centre stage.
The updated entry form, reflecting all category refinements, is now live on the Club’s website. The awards continue their partnership with The One Club and The One Show. Entries close on April 6, 2026, and eligible work must have been released between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026. Winners will be announced at Goafest 2026.
This year, the Abby Awards Governing Council went a step further, inviting some of India’s most awarded creative leaders and global jury veterans to help reimagine the categories and judging process. The result is a sharper, more future facing framework.
Two new categories have been introduced:
Social content and influencer marketing
Recognising the fast expanding universe of digital creators, collaborations and community building.
Creative commerce, use of data and B2B
Celebrating innovation across online and offline commerce, payment solutions, data driven channels, creative B2B and immersive brand experiences.
Both categories are designed to reward craft and quality of impact, rather than pure effectiveness metrics.
In a bid to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, seven sub categories within the Digital vertical have been removed after being deemed redundant.
Three social good verticals, Green Abby, Red Abby and Diversity Equality and Inclusivity, have now been merged into a single category titled Sustainability and Inclusion, bringing purpose driven work under one cohesive umbrella.
The Mobile category has been discontinued, reflecting the reality that mobile is no longer a niche medium but embedded across digital formats. The new Social Content and Influencer Marketing vertical is expected to absorb much of this work.
Acknowledging the role of marketers in driving creative excellence, a new honour titled Client of the Year has been introduced. It will be awarded to the client whose brands accumulate the highest number of points.
There is also a key change in how Creative Agency of the Year is calculated. Previously determined by points across eight traditional categories such as Print, Film, OOH, Integrated, Audio and Digital, the award will now consider performance across 18 creative categories, excluding Video Craft and Young Maverick Abby. The shift broadens the competitive canvas and reflects the industry’s expanding definition of creativity.
The Advertising Club president and McCann India CEO Dheeraj Sinha said Goafest has long stood for collaboration and creative excellence. He noted that in its 57th year, the Abby Awards continue to raise the bar and bring together the brightest minds in the business.
Abby Awards 2026 chairperson Ajay Kakar, added that the categories had been co created with leading creative luminaries for the first time. He expressed gratitude to The One Club and The One Show for supporting the judging process over the past five years and thanked agencies and clients for their consistent participation.
With new categories, sharper criteria and a broader lens on creativity, Creative Abby 2026 signals that in advertising, evolution is not optional. It is the brief.
